A Vision For Health Care In America

In researching  The Future of Health Care Delivery – Why It Must Change and How It Will Affect You, I had in depth interviews with over 150 leaders from across the country including hospital CEOs and COOs, practicing community and academic physicians in both primary care and specialty areas, pharmacists, nurses, insurance executives, health care consultants and many others. But I found what I think is a very good vision and resulting model right at home in Howard County, Maryland.

County Executive Ken Ulman and former health officer Peter Beilenson, MD, MPH created “Healthy Howard” to assist those without insurance.  Their concept was to provide primary care access for all, an extensive network of specialists, community and tertiary care hospitals and a basic electronic medical record. Methods were built in to maintain costs as low as possible. But part of the basic premise was that with these “rights” for the patients came certain “responsibilities” – some limited payment participation and some requirements toward practicing healthy living as well as compliance with treatment recommendations. It structured a good balance between patient rights and responsibilities, between care delivery and a working payment system, between access and effective care.

Howard County, between Baltimore and Washington, is a fairly affluent county with excellent providers and a highly regarded community hospital. Despite affluence, there are uninsured individuals and families. Some could afford insurance but choose to spend their dollars elsewhere. Some are the young invincibles who don’t feel they need it. Others work in the service industry where their employer does not provide insurance and they cannot afford to carry the entire burden. And some are simply indigent.  The question was how to provide for this disparate group in an effective yet equitable manner that would render good quality care at a moderate cost.

Healthy Howard is a county-assisted, community based not for profit organization which collects a modest fee, on a sliding income scale, from its members. In return, each individual gets unlimited access to a primary care physician (PCP). The office employs a care coordinator who works with the PCPs to assist those patients who have complex chronic illnesses such as chronic lung disease, cancer, or diabetes with complications. There is also a pharmacy benefits manager located in the PCP office to assist patients find drugs at the most reasonable price in the community. They work with the physicians to find generics, discuss other effective agents with the doctor or even contact the manufacturer if appropriate to get a reduced price for an indigent patient.

Of course some patients will need to see a specialist physician. Healthy Howard has developed an agreement with the county’s specialists to accept, gratis, these patients with the understanding that the program will allocate the patients across all the specialists in a given field (e.g., cardiology or orthopedics) so that no one physician has an excessive burden.  Howard County General Hospital, being part of a unique system in the state of Maryland, has always accepted indigent patients but under the agreement with Healthy Howard, the hospital forgoes any attempt to collect from these patients.  Further, since the hospital is part of the Johns Hopkins Health System, an agreement was reached with Hopkins to accept any patient that needs tertiary care at no charge.

These might be termed the “rights” of the patients. But there is also some participation required in order to be part of Healthy Howard; these are the corresponding “responsibilities. In addition to the modest sliding scale fee, each patient is assigned a health coach with whom he or she must meet on a regular basis. The coach works with the patient to develop a plan for healthy living. This might include attending a smoking cessation program, attending a gym for exercise or working on a diet plan. Together patient and coach develop a plan of action with benchmarks at various intervals. The patient meets with the coach periodically to compare actual results to the benchmarks.

The coach is there not just to measure results but to assist and to help break down barriers. Sometimes just some encouragement is all that is needed; sometimes referral to a specialist such as a nutritionist is helpful; and sometimes a more involved approach is required. As Mr. Ulman described to me, imagine an overweight lady who wants to participate in a fitness program at the local health club – to which Healthy Howard has worked out a special free arrangement. But she says cannot attend because her daughter is a single working Mom and so she, the grandmother, must babysit the child. No problem, the coach finds a fitness center that also has built in day care, breaking down the barrier that had to date prevented success.  The idea is that the plan will help overcome barriers yet still expect responsibility to meet objectives.

Healthy Howard, as its name implies, will mean healthier participants a few years down the road. The primary care physicians, with help from the coaches, will give attention to prevention thus lessening the burden of chronic illness in the future. And they will give careful care coordination for those with chronic illnesses now- thus lessening the current cost burden by reducing the need for specialist visits, excess tests and imaging and unnecessary drugs

And it worked. Now a few years in, there has been a 35% reduction in ER visits and a 50% decline in hospital admissions. Enrollees are healthier and more behaviorally motivated to maintain good health. Sufficient success to substantiate the awarding of a federal contract to utilize these principles  to create a state-wide consumer operated health insurance plan (a CO-OP) for the ACA Maryland insurance exchange based on the principles of 1) having the vast majority of care provided by primary care, 2) using bundled or capitated provider compensation and 3) using evidence-based medicine.

Healthy Howard, as its name implies, means healthier participants. Its great value is as a vision of health care delivery that incorporates improved quality, reduced costs and excellent access in return for a modest fee and a commitment to living a reasonably healthy lifestyle. Rights and responsibilities working together. It is a good vision to use as a starting point.

Further Disruptive Changes in Health Care Delivery

Technology to lower costs rather than accelerate them. Smart phones to increase physician and other providers’ productivity. Fewer primary care physicians but more involvement by nurse practioneers and others. And increasing appreciation of the value of integrative medicine. These are but a few of the disruptive changes in care delivery that are coming. 

In my last post I observed that  the health care delivery system will change in coming years – quite unrelated to reform – and gave the most important drivers of change and how these changes will often be disruptive, transformative or both. Here are a few more. 

We think of new technologies as exacerbating health care costs. But it is also quite correct to look to technology to reduce costs or at least slow the growth of expenditures. There will become a new value proposition for technology. Today and tomorrow technology wil be accepted if it to helps health care professionals to 1) compensate for shortages, 2) enhance their responsiveness to patients 3) control costs and 4) improve quality and safety. 

Smart phones with wireless connectivity and multiple apps are a good example of technology to assist, compensate, enhance responsiveness and improve quality. Increasingly, physicians are becoming very reliant on their phones as a shortcut to knowledge, to stay well informed, to argue and debate among themselves and perform many other functions. 

Robotics can likewise benefit all four parameters. A good example is how robots have made the hospital pharmacy more efficient while substantially safer. One robot selects pills via bar code; another prepares intravenous medications and solutions more accurately then a technician and a third transports medications to the nursing unit using wireless technology – sort of like R2D2. This frees up the pharmacist to do what he or she does best such as watching for drug-drug interactions, proper dosing, and critical higher order functions.  

But the coming changes are not just in technology but in the distribution and work of providers. With shortages of physicians, especially primary care physicians, appropriate integration of nurse practioneers and physician assistants can not only partially compensate but provide quality interaction with patients, augment preventive programs and enhance care coordination for those with chronic illnesses. And although there is considerable controversy as to appropriate scope of practice, it is certainly clear that the interaction of PCPs with NPs and PAs can enhance the totality of patient care.  Similarly, expect to see more mental health delivered by psychologists and social workers; visual care by optometrists; and hearing care by audiologists. 

Consumers (patients) will press for and expect a more integrative approach from their PCP and other providers. Patients today increasingly search out and use practioneers of acupuncture, massage, chiropractic, yoga, mind body techniques, energy channeling (Healing Touch, Therapeutic Touch, and Reiki) and other complementary medical modalities. More and more medical students are graduating with at least some understanding and training in the use of these approaches. And the acceptance by already practicing physicians is growing, albeit slowly in many cases.  

Integrative medicine means more attention to the whole person – family history, social situation, work environment, and how all of these plus stress, eating, smoking and drug preferences interact with the patient’s illnesses. A “prescription” for high cholesterol may still include a statin but it might well also include a trip to a nutritionist, a personal trainer, a program for stress reduction, etc. The end result is better medicine yet completely coordinated by the primary care physician.  

Health care delivery is transforming. It will come in fits and starts but it is and will continue to change. Hopefully most of the changes will be for the betterment of patients and providers alike.