Yuri Chaves Martins, MD/PhD
Fellow in Pain Medicine Anesthesia at MGH
PGY 5
March 27th, 2019
During a cold winter day of February, I left my home to attend
a conference that I thought would tell me how the main players in healthcare
were tackling their problems. I ended my day with more questions than answers. The
US cannot be proud of the efficiency of his healthcare system. It spends more
money per capita in healthcare related expenses than any other developed nation
but ranks 37 out of 191 countries according to its performance when evaluated
by the World Health Organization (https://www.who.int/whr/2000/media_centre/press_release/en/). This indicates that we must work to decrease
healthcare costs without losing quality and I was happy to see in the
conference that the problem is being addressed in multiple fronts.
Steve Nelson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, is trying to use
technology to address the problem. He showed a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEybaotgZgc)
that invites us to imagine the future of healthcare. During the video we people
interacting with multiple devices that would measure their health information
and coach them about their health or send that to healthcare professionals for
interpretation. The physician, if something unusual is found on the information
provided, could then communicate with the patient.
Kate Walsh, CEO of Boston Medical Center, is using a community-based
focus to solve the same problem. Her projects for increasing access to
affordable housing in the region served by BMC and helping people filling up
their tax forms for free demonstrates her approach to change social
determinants of health in an attempt to decrease healthcare costs.
Katharine Miao, the medical director of CityMD®, has a
completely different approach. She changed the system by creating a network of
easy access walk in clinics that decreased health care cost by decreasing the
number of ER visits from people with non-emergency health problems.
Each approach has its problems and advantages. It is
difficult to predict which one will be more successful. Maybe a hybrid one?
However, the only thing that is certain is that healthcare will change soon and
we, as healthcare professionals, need to brace for the impact.
