Wednesday, December 29, 2010
11 health care predictions for 2011
Here are 11 things that are absolutely going to happen* in 2011 (they're in no particular order….or are they?):
1. There will be no big compromise between President Obama and the Republicans on health care reform. Why? Because the law is such a massive collection of, well, stuff, that it is pretty much impossible to find pieces of it that you could cut a deal on, even if you wanted to. And no, the federal district court decision on the individual mandate doesn't change my mind ... and in fact may breathe new life into other parts of the law). State governments, insurance companies, and private businesses have made all kinds of important and hard to reverse choices based on the law as is. There's not much of an appetite outside of people trying to score political points for making big changes.
2. No major employer will drop their health benefits. No major employer is going to outsource their health care benefits to the government any time soon. Employers, particularly the big self-insured employers that pay for health care costs as a bottom-line expense, see their benefits as an integral part of their business and competitive strategies. As Congress looks at this issue more closely, they will learn this.
3. Time that doctors spend with patients will be less in 2011 than earlier years. It's a long-term trend, and the factors that create this problem aren't getting better. The latest government data show that the average doctor visit features face to face time with the patient of 15 minutes or less. With an aging population, increasing numbers of people getting health insurance, and no influx of new doctors, this problem will keep getting worse.
4. Misdiagnosis will emerge as the hot new topic in health care quality. More and more attention is being paid to the root causes of health care quality failures. People will increasingly look to the groundbreaking work being done by doctors like Patrick Crosskerry and others. Start out with the wrong diagnosis and you're headed down a very perilous path.
5. More employers will start charging employees surcharges for being overweight, smoking, or otherwise not taking care of themselves. Among self-insured employers, who pay for a huge proportion of American health care costs, this is becoming increasingly mainstream. These employers are saying to their employees: "It's your business if you don't take good care of yourself, but it's mine to pay for the consequences of it." So employees are being told they need to pay extra for their health coverage, unless they participate in programs the employer makes available to help them quit smoking, lose weight, and manage their chronic illnesses.
6. The health insurance system will start to take on more and more of the bad aspects of the workers compensation system. If you get hurt at work, you end up in an often strange parallel health care system, where lawyers and rules and regulations may seem as important to your care as medicine. Some say that aspects of health care reform will bring that same dynamic to regular health care, and I think they have a point. If health care policymakers were more aware of how our workers compensation system works, they'd implement more of it. Look for that to start to happen.
7. A doctor will get sued by offering medical advice to a patient online. It's America, so it's bound to happen. When it does, it will make for a great media story.
8. Google or Microsoft will emerge as the leading standard for electronic medical records. One of the biggest problems with getting electronic medical records (EMRs) implemented is that there isn't any agreed-upon standard. Who has a better chance of creating an industry standard? A clever health care IT company, or a massive company in the business of creating industry standards for IT? I'm betting on the big boys.
9. State governments will start major redesigns of their health care benefits programs. States are spending enormous amounts of money on benefits packages that are far richer than anything in the private sector. There's a tremendous amount of money to be saved for state governments by modernizing their benefits programs. Look for this to start to happen in 2011.
10. "ACO" will be the hot buzzword in health care. If you don't know what an ACO is, you will. Parts of the reform law encourage providers to set up these entities, which are something like HMOs, version 2.0. Creating an ACO requires a lot of changes to the way providers operate. We'll see if they end up being successful, but they will be a hot topic.
11. Health care reform will become more popular in the polls. It can only go up.
We'll check back at the end of 2011 to see how I did.
*By "absolutely going to happen," I mean "unless I'm wrong."
This post by Evan Falchuk, JD, appeared at Get Better Health, a network of popular health bloggers brought together by Val Jones, MD. Better Health's mission is to support and promote health care professional bloggers, provide insightful and trustworthy health commentary, and help to inform health policy makers about the provider point of view on health care reform, science, research and patient care.
Labels: accountable care organizations, diet, electronic medical records, exercise, health care reform, health insurance, malpractice, obesity, smoking cessation, Workplace issues
posted by the Better Health network at
1:00 PM
Contact ACP Internist
Send comments to ACP Internist staff at acpinternist@acponline.org.
Previous Posts
- Is it bad patient behavior or poor doctor-patient ...
- Going against medicine: courageous or foolish?
- Remembering Gene
- QD: News Every Day--About that placebo effect. . ....
- Why morning exercise is best
- QD: News Every Day--Medicaid continues to stress s...
- QD: News Every Day--Echinacea won't cure the commo...
- Changing the business of anticoagulation
- iPhone diagnosis of Raynaud's disease
- QD: News Every Day--Speaking fee bans are being by...
Blog log
Members of the American College of Physicians contribute posts from their own sites to ACP Internistand ACP Hospitalist. Contributors include:
Albert Fuchs,
MD
Albert Fuchs, MD, FACP, graduated from the
University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine, where he
also did his internal medicine training. Certified by the American
Board of Internal Medicine, Dr. Fuchs spent three years as a
full-time faculty member at UCLA School of Medicine before opening
his private practice in Beverly Hills in 2000.
And Thus, It Begins
Amanda Xi, ACP Medical
Student Member, is a first-year medical student at the OUWB School
of Medicine, charter class of 2015, in Rochester, Mich., from which
she which chronicles her journey through medical training from day
1 of medical school.
Zackary Berger
Zackary Berger, MD, ACP Member, is a primary care doctor and
general internist in the Division of General Internal Medicine at
Johns Hopkins. His research interests include doctor-patient
communication, bioethics, and systematic reviews.
Controversies in Hospital
Infection Prevention
Run by three ACP
Fellows, this blog ponders vexing issues in infection prevention
and control, inside and outside the hospital. Daniel J Diekema, MD,
FACP, practices infectious diseases, clinical microbiology, and
hospital epidemiology in Iowa City, Iowa, splitting time between
seeing patients with infectious diseases, diagnosing infections in
the microbiology laboratory, and trying to prevent infections in
the hospital. Michael B. Edmond, MD, FACP, is a hospital
epidemiologist in Richmond, Va., with a focus on understanding why
infections occur in the hospital and ways to prevent these
infections, and sees patients in the inpatient and outpatient
settings. Eli N. Perencevich, MD, ACP Member, is an infectious
disease physician and epidemiologist in Iowa City, Iowa, who
studies methods to halt the spread of resistant bacteria in our
hospitals (including novel ways to get everyone to wash their
hands).
db's Medical Rants
Robert M. Centor, MD, FACP, contributes short essays contemplating
medicine and the health care system.
DrDialogue
Juliet K. Mavromatis, MD, FACP, provides a conversation about
health topics for patients and health professionals.
Dr. Mintz' Blog
Matthew Mintz, MD, FACP, has practiced internal medicine for more
than a decade and is an Associate Professor of Medicine at an
academic medical center on the East Coast. His time is split
between teaching medical students and residents, and caring for
patients.
Everything
Health
Toni Brayer, MD, FACP, blogs about the rapid changes in science,
medicine, health and healing in the 21st century.
FutureDocs
Vineet Arora, MD, FACP, is Associate Program Director for the
Internal Medicine Residency and Assistant Dean of Scholarship &
Discovery at the Pritzker School of Medicine for the University of
Chicago. Her education and research focus is on resident duty
hours, patient handoffs, medical professionalism, and quality of
hospital care. She is also an academic hospitalist.
Glass Hospital
John H. Schumann, MD, FACP, provides transparency on the workings
of medical practice and the complexities of hospital care,
illuminates the emotional and cognitive aspects of caregiving and
decision-making from the perspective of an active primary care
physician, and offers behind-the-scenes portraits of hospital
sanctums and the people who inhabit them.
Gut Check
Ryan Madanick, MD, ACP Member, is a gastroenterologist at the
University of North Carolina School of Medicine, and the Program
Director for the GI & Hepatology Fellowship Program. He
specializes in diseases of the esophagus, with a strong interest in
the diagnosis and treatment of patients who have
difficult-to-manage esophageal problems such as refractory GERD,
heartburn, and chest pain.
I'm dok
Mike Aref, MD, PhD, FACP, is an academic hospitalist with an
interest in basic and clinical science and education, with
interests in noninvasive monitoring and diagnostic testing using
novel bedside imaging modalities, diagnostic reasoning, medical
informatics, new medical education modalities, pre-code/code
management, palliative care, patient-physician communication,
quality improvement, and quantitative biomedical imaging.
Informatics
Professor
William Hersh, MD, FACP, Professor and Chair, Department of Medical
Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology, Oregon Health &
Science University, posts his thoughts on various topics related to
biomedical and health informatics.
David Katz, MD
David L. Katz, MD, MPH, FACP, is an internationally renowned
authority on nutrition, weight management, and the prevention of
chronic disease, and an internationally recognized leader in
integrative medicine and patient-centered care.
Just Oncology
Richard Just, MD, ACP Member, has 36 years in clinical practice of
hematology and medical oncology. His blog is a joint publication
with Gregg Masters, MPH.
KevinMD
Kevin Pho, MD, ACP Member, offers one of the Web's definitive sites
for influential health commentary.
MD
Whistleblower
Michael Kirsch, MD, FACP, addresses the joys and challenges of
medical practice, including controversies in the doctor-patient
relationship, medical ethics and measuring medical quality. When
he's not writing, he's performing colonoscopies.
Medical Lessons
Elaine Schattner, MD, FACP, shares her ideas on education, ethics
in medicine, health care news and culture. Her views on medicine
are informed by her past experiences in caring for patients, as a
researcher in cancer immunology, and as a patient who's had breast
cancer.
Mired in MedEd
Alexander M.
Djuricich, MD, FACP, is the Associate Dean for Continuing Medical
Education (CME), and a Program Director in Medicine-Pediatrics at
the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, where he
blogs about medical education.
More Musings
Rob Lamberts, MD, ACP Member, a med-peds and general practice
internist, returns with "volume 2" of his personal musings about
medicine, life, armadillos and Sasquatch at More Musings (of a
Distractible Kind).
Prescriptions
David M. Sack, MD, FACP, practices general gastroenterology at a
small community hospital in Connecticut. His blog is a series of
musings on medicine, medical care, the health care system and
medical ethics, in no particular order.
Reflections of a Grady
Doctor
Kimberly Manning, MD, FACP, reflects on the personal side of being
a doctor in a community hospital in Atlanta.
The Blog of Paul Sufka
Paul Sufka,
MD, ACP Member, is a board certified rheumatologist in St. Paul,
Minn. He was a chief resident in internal medicine with the
University of Minnesota and then completed his fellowship training
in rheumatology in June 2011 at the University of Minnesota
Department of Rheumatology. His interests include the use of
technology in medicine.
Technology in (Medical)
Education
Neil Mehta, MBBS, MS, FACP, is interested in use of technology in
education, social media and networking, practice management and
evidence-based medicine tools, personal information and knowledge
management.
Peter A. Lipson,
MD
Peter A. Lipson, MD, ACP Member, is a practicing internist and
teaching physician in Southeast Michigan. The blog, which has been
around in various forms since 2007, offers musings on the
intersection of science, medicine, and culture.
Why is American Health Care So Expensive?
Janice
Boughton, MD, FACP, practiced internal medicine for 20 years before
adopting a career in hospital and primary care medicine as a locum
tenens physician. She lives in Idaho when not traveling.
World's Best Site
Daniel Ginsberg, MD,
FACP, is an internal medicine physician who has avidly applied
computers to medicine since 1986, when he first wrote medically
oriented computer programs. He is in practice in Tacoma,
Washington.
Other blogs of note:
American Journal of
Medicine
Also known as the Green Journal, the American Journal of Medicine
publishes original clinical articles of interest to physicians in
internal medicine and its subspecialities, both in academia and
community-based practice.
Clinical
Correlations
A collaborative medical blog started by Neil Shapiro, MD, ACP
Member, associate program director at New York University Medical
Center's internal medicine residency program. Faculty, residents
and students contribute case studies, mystery quizzes, news,
commentary and more.
Interact MD
Michael Benjamin, MD, ACP member, doesn't accept industry money so
he can create an independent, clinician-reviewed space on the
Internet for physicians to report and comment on the medical news
of the day.
PLoS Blog
The Public Library of Science's open access materials include a
blog.
White Coat
Rants
One of the most popular anonymous blogs written by an emergency
room physician.
1 Comments:
You are right in your predictions for health care in 2011. But I think this can be solved. Congress and Obama will not figure it out because health care is so costly that the government would go broke. Employers will learn ways to help reduce cost that may help in short term.
I have a long term solution for health care. That is taking a pro-active look on where these cost and health problems are coming from. over 60% of health cost can be preventable.
We need leaders to start standing up. I plan to help this country reduce its cost in health care by showing the citizens of this country that if they want to reduce their cost, if they want to make less trips to the doctors, if they want to live longer healthy lives they can, but they will need to make life style changes.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home