Just a few notes from this morning’s keynote address, given by George Halverson of Kaiser Permanente. While many attendees can’t relate to someone with the resources Halverson has at his fingertips, there was still a lot of interest in his take on the current climate.
Some of the points he made:
At $2.5 trillion, healthcare is the fastest growing segment of the U.S. economy. If costs continue to skyrocket, healthcare, he says, will be the crippling factor in keeping the economy from recovering.
A systemic approach that involves best practices and coordinated care between healthcare providers is needed in order to improve care. (I heard one attendee question how on earth people are going to establish best practices that are agreed upon)
The National Institutes of Health has established a goal of 90 percent of care based on scientific evidence by 2020. This, says Halverson, is shooting way too low.
In order to thrive, the healthcare IT industry needs data to be computerized, interactive, and constantly available.
Kaiser has implemented a system of e-visits, is sending lab results directly to patients, and is piloting in-home monitoring. (One attendee remarked, “With that budget, who wouldn’t be doing all that?”)
His most interesting point, in my opinion, was an anecdote that illustrated just how ineffective the current healthcare system is with regard to communicating information to patients. There’s an ad for an Alzheimer’s medication in which patients are warned that if they are taking the drug along with a heart medication, they need to speak to their physician. As Halverson pointed out, perhaps Alzheimer’s patients shouldn’t be relied upon to tell their physician what other medications they’re taking.
