Crossing the quality chasm in health reform: hearing of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, United States Senate

Original publisher: Washington : U.S. G.P.O., 2010. LC Number: KF26 .L27 2009q OCLC Number: (OCoLC)707080119 Subject: Medical care -- United States. Excerpt: ... 11 THE GOAL OF IMPROVING HEALTH FOR AMERICA The Goal of Health Care is Health, so the Goal of Health Care Reform Must Be To Improve the Value of Health Care I am neither a physician nor a Washington health policy insider. My expertise in this field comes as a scholar and professor of Innovation and Strategy, as a Ph.D. in engineering economic systems analysis, and as the mother of a child who was chronically ill and in pain for most of a decade before his full and complete recovery. As a professional, and as a mother, I have questioned the conventional wisdom that has blocked change and retained a system that everyone agrees could be signifi-cantly improved. The real goal of health care is health. Yet, policy discussions are often framed as if the goal of health care delivery were cost reduction. If the goal of health care was simply cost reduction, the solution would be to offer pain killers and compassion. Clearly, that is not the solution for health care in our Nation. Suc-cessful health care reform efforts must do more than cut costs. The real goal of health care reform is, and must be, to drive dramatic and ongoing improve-ments in the value of health care. This means improving health care outcomes relative to the cost of achieving these outcomes. Improving value in health care means improving health care outcomes for the money spent. This is a critical idea and an intuitive one. In most choices, people seek value - not the lowest cost regardless of poor quality, and not the high-est quality without regard for cost. The tremendous opportunity in health care is how powerfully improvements in quality actually drive costs down. To see this, one must simply recognize that Americans desire more health, not more treat-ment. Improvement in health care need not mean more treatment and more cost. Often, i...