Aging Gracefully – Part 3 The Importance of Comprehensive Primary Care

Most people misunderstand what constitutes really good primary care.  We can slow the aging process with appropriate life style and behaviors as discussed in my last post. That is good but it is not enough. As we age it’s also important to have comprehensive primary care.  The usual expectation is that primary care is just for the “simple stuff” or for episodic care when we have a problem but that is a gross misunderstanding. 

Comprehensive primary care is actually much different. It means a close relationship between you and your PCP which is of course required to build trust and to heal. It means dealing with the episodic medical problems which occur from day to day and month to month throughout life. It also means actively managing serious chronic illnesses (a specialist in fact is rarely needed). It means coordinating that care however when specialists are needed. It means helping you to maintain your wellness and your health and working with you at chronic illness risk factor detection and reduction. And it means preventing acute illnesses through vaccines and other approaches.  This is comprehensive primary care and when it is comprehensive it can deal with perhaps 90+% of all of our health care needs.  Specialists are rarely needed, prescription use goes down and hospitalization rates fall substantially.  

 

The key requirements of comprehensive primary care include some basics – a well-educated, well-trained, up-to-date PCP who is committed to relationship-based care and uses a proactive team-based approach.  But the second key ingredient is time – time to listen, to think, to diagnose and to treat and to prevent.  Unfortunately most primary care physicians just do not have enough time today and the result is a tendency to refer to specialists. But with that time, they could have dealt with the problem themselves. 

Overcoming this time limitation is perhaps best done through some form of direct primary care -sometimes called membership, sometimes called retainer and sometimes called concierge medicine.  But whatever the name, the fundamental ingredient is to reduce the practice size from today’s standard of 2,500-3,000 down to about 500 individuals.  This allows the primary care physician to offer you same or next day appointments which last as long as necessary; the time necessary to listen and listen intensively; the time to give a truly extensive annual evaluation; the time to offer expanded preventive and wellness care.  Direct primary care physicians usually give out their cell phone number for the patient to use any time day or night and they respond to emails. 

 

Comprehensive primary care certainly costs more, but it offers better health and wellness. It offers better quality of care. Patient and doctor are more satisfied and in the end it substantially reduces the total cost of care because of the reduced necessity for specialists, testing, prescriptions and hospitalizations.  

To summarize this series of posts on aging, there is a steady slow loss of physiologic function in most of our organs over time. It is possible to slow this average of 1% annual decline and with it the ultimate functional impairments. It is also possible to avoid or certainly delay age-prevalent diseases.  But in both cases it’s up to us.  It’s up to us to adjust our lifestyles and we preferably need to do so beginning at a young age. It is never too late to begin a preventive program.  We can slow physical decline with exercise, diet and reducing stress.  We can avoid many diseases via nutrition, exercise, less stress and by not smoking. We can slow cognitive decline with physical activity, intellectual challenges and social engagement.  And we will definitely benefit when we make good use of comprehensive primary care.

Aging Gracefully – Part 2 Slowing The Aging Process

Can we slow the aging process?  The answer is a definite yes and it all has to do with our lifestyles and behaviors.  Here is a quiz.  What percent of Americans can answer yes to all five of the following statements?

 

Here’s a clue.  We know that about 20% of Americans smoke so the highest answer you can give to this question is that 80% could answer yes to all five.  The actual answer may surprise you.  It did me.  Only 3% of Americans can answer yes to all five! 

Let’s return to bone mineral density.  The way to slow BMD decline is to exercise and to eat a nutritious diet.  (Vitamin D supplements may also be necessary for those in temperate climates who get little sunshine on their skin.) So instead of a 1% decline per year it can be more of a ½% decline per year.  On the other hand for couch potatoe that decline won’t be 1% but it may be more like 1½ to 2% per year.  The same goes for cognition.  There are certain adverse factors such as vascular conditions and the metabolic syndrome (a precursor to diabetes) and also the chemicals released through chronic stress that speed up cognitive decline.  But there are also protective factors which we can control ourselves.  These include being physically active, intellectually challenged, and socially engaged.  It may be a surprise that physical activity is important for cognition but it has been clearly demonstrated to be critical.  Intellectual challenge is different than reading a book, even a complex book.  That’s not a challenge.  But if you belong to a book club and have to actively defend your perspective and point of view that then becomes a challenge.  Socially engaged means being involved as a human being with other human beings.  This is something that is frequently lost during older years if isolation develops due to limited mobility, inability to drive, etc. 

So the essential steps of slowing the aging process are: Avoid tobacco and remember it’s never too late to quit.  Reduce chronic stress because the chemicals released from stress have a very adverse effect on many physiologic systems such as immune function.  Eat a nutritious diet.  Do cognitive exercises which challenge your intellect.  Remain socially well connected. Physical exercise should include aerobic activity of about thirty minutes five days per week (just simple walking is adequate); resistance or weight training 2-3 times per week and balance exercises 2-3 times per week. 

 

To summarize, there is a steady slow loss of physiologic function in most of our organs over time. It is possible to slow this 1% decline and with it the ultimate functional impairments. It is also possible to avoid or certainly delay age-prevalent diseases.  But in both cases it’s up to us.  It’s up to us to adjust our lifestyles and we preferably need to do so beginning at a young age. That said, it is never too late to begin a preventive program.  We can slow physical decline with exercise, diet and reducing stress.  We can avoid many diseases by not smoking. We can slow cognitive decline with physical activity, intellectual challenges and social engagement.  It’s worth it.

Next post – The importance of comprehensive primary care in managing the aging process.

Aging Gracefully – Part 1 The Normal Aging Process

It is possible to slow the aging process.  No there is no Fountain of Youth and no, there is no pill that’s been discovered.  It’s all about lifestyle and this means starting at an early age and sticking with it through the years. 

I was recently invited to give a talk to a group of about 100 individuals contemplating moving to a continuing care retirement community.  The topic - is it possible to slow the aging process?  I titled it “Aging Gracefully.”  Here are my thoughts divided into three major categories:  the normal aging process, slowing the aging process, and (in a post to follow) obtaining the very best comprehensive health care.  The talk was picked up by the Howard Times of the Baltimore Sun; the reporter’s article is available at this link:  http://bsun.md/1AtQW7E

 “Old parts wear out.”  That’s normal aging.  It’s universal, it’s progressive and, at least as we know it today, it is irreversible.  Most organ functions decline by about 1% per year.  Fortunately our organs have a huge redundancy and so we can afford the declines without illness.  But eventually if we live long enough and the process continues at the usual rate a point is reached at which functional impairment or actual disease presents. 

Let’s use bone mineral density and cognitive function as examples.  During our childhood and teenage years our bone mineral density increases and with it our bone strength.  It reaches a peak at about age 20 and plateaus and then by age 35 starts a slow but inexorable decline of about 1% per year.  Should we live long enough we will reach a point which we can call the “fracture threshold” meaning that if we fall it’s possible to break a leg or a bone in our back.  Of course that 1% decline per year is an average.  Some people decline faster and some people decline more slowly.  We’ll come back to that point.  The same goes for cognitive function.  We’re at a peak at about age 20 and then there is a long plateau with a slow decline such that by the time we’re in our 80’s or 90’s most people have some noticeable decline in cognition. 

There are certain impairments that come with aging such as reduced vision, reduced hearing and reduced mobility.  We might not consider these as true diseases.  However there is also an increased prevalence of chronic illnesses such as heart failure, cancer, chronic lung and kidney disease and diabetes.  They often manifest in older ages but they actually originated many years ago.  For example coronary artery plaque buildup begins in childhood but may not manifest itself as a heart attack until the late 60’s.  Similarly lung cancer is on average diagnosed at age 72 but the cause began way back as a teenager when the person first went back behind the garage for a smoke. (BTW, not all lung cancers are due to smoking but for those that are, it was a long slow process over time.) 

These chronic illnesses are largely due to our adverse behaviors, our lifestyles.  The four big behaviors that need to be addressed are nutrition, exercise, chronic stress and tobacco.  We could add other factors but especially inadequate dental hygiene and excessive alcohol. All too many of us have poor nutrition (e.g. packaged and processed foods, lack of fresh fruits and vegetables, etc.) and at the same time we eat too much of it.  Most Americans don’t get an adequate amount of exercise.  It seems that everyone has some level of chronic stress and 20% of Americans smoke. 

To summarize, there is a normal aging process wherein organs reduce their function by about 1% per year. This rate of decline is related, in part, to our lifestyles beginning when we are quite young. There are also age-prevalent chronic diseases that are also life style driven. Our personal agendas need to include attention to healthy living so that we can preserve wellness.

Next time – Slowing the Aging Process

 

 

Lifestyles Cause Most Serious Disease and Deaths

We all recognize that as a society we have some adverse lifestyle behaviors such as overeating a non-nutritious diet, being fairly sedentary, having chronic stress and having 20% of us still smoking. These behaviors cause the majority of the serious chronic illnesses that are rampant today– yet they are largely preventable. And it is these diseases – heart disease, cancer, chronic lung disease, diabetes, etc. - which are the major causes of death. It’s quite clear that the best chance we have for increasing our life spans and overall improving our health is to adjust our personal behaviors and to do so at an early age. 

We often think of heart disease, cancer and stroke as the major causes of death and, as diseases that cause death, which is correct. But what if we go back further and look at what caused those diseases. The rank order of causes of death according to a study from the Centers for Disease Control in the Journal of the American Medical Association lists tobacco, poor nutrition, lack of exercise, alcohol to excess, infections, toxic agents, motor vehicle accidents, sexual behaviors and illicit drug use as the primary predisposing factors to the diseases that cause death. A look at that list shows that the ones at the top of the list and a number of others all relate to our behaviors.   

The diseases that cause death have changed substantially over the decades (see “The Burden of Disease and The Changing Task of Medicine”.) At the beginning of the 1900’s it was infectious diseases that caused most deaths. Over time they came under reasonably good control with preventive techniques such as immunizations, sanitary sewer systems and clean water systems and then, of course, antibiotics. Meanwhile chronic illnesses such as coronary artery disease became much more prevalent. [See this graphic] Even though fewer people smoke than a few decades ago our obesity and our lack of exercise have led to rapid increases in diabetes, heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure and many other chronic illnesses that last a lifetime.   

What we need in America today is a focus on health care meaning a greater focus on disease prevention and health promotion beginning in childhood and a recognition that our adverse behaviors or lifestyles are the major drivers of today’s chronic illnesses – the ones that will lead to our deaths.

 

 

America Has A Health Care Paradox

We have a real paradox in American healthcare. On the one hand we have exceptionally well educated and well trained providers who are committed to our care. We are the envy of the world for our biomedical research prowess, funded largely by the National Institutes of Health and conducted across the county in universities and medical schools. The pharmaceutical industry continuously brings forth life saving and disease altering medications. The medical device industry is incredibly innovative and entrepreneurial.  The makers of diagnostic equipment such as CAT scans and hand held ultrasounds are equally productive. 

A few examples.  The science of genomics is revolutionizing medical care in profound ways such as producing targeted cancer drugs, predicting later onset of cardiac disease, offering prognostic data to guide cancer treatment, rapidly identifying a bacteria and its antibiotic susceptibility and suggesting how our diet can actually impact our genes through the science of nutragenomics. 

The pharmaceutical industry has brought us the likes of statins to reduce cholesterol, drugs to prevent blood clotting, and the targeted therapies for cancer. The device industry has created, for example, a potpourri of new approaches that have transformed cardiac care. These include angioplasty, stents, pacemakers, intracardiac defibrillators and now even the ability to insert a prosthetic aortic valve through a catheter rather than doing it via open surgery. And we can now noninvasively image organs in incredible detail and learn about physiology with molecular imaging.

So we can be appropriately awed and proud and pleased at what is available when needed for our care.

But, on the other hand, we have a dysfunctional health care delivery system.

Our current delivery system focuses on acute medical problems where it is reasonably effective. But it works poorly for most chronic medical illnesses and it costs far too much. When the famous bank robber, Willie Sutton, was asked why he robbed banks he replied “that’s where the money is.” In healthcare the money is in chronic illnesses – diabetes with complications, cardiac diseases such as heart failure, cancer and neurologic diseases. These consume about 75-85% of all dollars spent on medical care. So we need to focus there.

These chronic illnesses are increasing in frequency at a very rapid rate. They are largely (although certainly not totally) preventable. Overeating a non-nutritious diet, lack of exercise, chronic stress, and 20% still smoking are the major predisposing causes of these chronic illnesses. Obesity is now a true epidemic with one-third of us overweight and one-third of us frankly obese. The result of these adverse behaviors is high blood pressure, high cholesterol, elevated blood glucose followed by to diabetes, heart disease, stroke, chronic lung and kidney disease and cancer.

And once any of these chronic diseases develops, it usually persists for life (of course some cancers are curable but not so diabetes or heart failure). These are complex diseases to manage and expensive to treat – an expense that continues for the rest of the person’s life.

What is needed is aggressive preventive approaches  and, for those with a chronic illness, a multi-disciplinary approach, one that has a committed physician coordinator. Providers (and I refer here mostly to primary care physicians), unfortunately, do not give really adequate preventive care in most cases. And they generally do not spend the time needed to coordinate the care of those with chronic illness – which is absolutely essential to assure good quality at a reasonable cost.

When a patient is sent for extra tests, imaging or specialists visits the costs go up exponentially and the quality does not rise with the costs. Indeed it often falls. But primary care physicians are in a non-sustainable business model with today’s reimbursement systems so they find they just do no have enough time for care coordination or more than the basics of preventive care. Nor do they have the time to listen carefully or think deeply about a problem; so the response is to send the patient for a test or to a specialist.

So our paradox is that we have the providers, the science, the drugs, the diagnostics and devices that we need for patient care. But we have a new type of disease – complex, chronic illness, mostly preventable, for which we have not established good methods of prevention nor do we care for them adequately once the disease develops. And all of this is exacerbated by an insurance system that puts the incentives in the wrong places. The result is a sicker population, episodic care and expenses that are far greater than necessary. 

Transformational and Disruptive Changes Are Coming to the Delivery System

More chronic illnesses, more diseases of old age, consumers demanding more quality and safety, physicians no longer in typical private practice, and high deductible health care polices are each about to cause major changes in the practice of medicine and how it is delivered to patients. Will this come about smoothly or, more likely, with some serious hand wringing? 

Health care delivery will change substantially in the coming years. This is not because of reform but rather due to a set of drivers that are exerting a great push and pull to the delivery system. Some of these changes will be quite transformational and some will be very disruptive of the status quo. What are these drivers?

 

One of the most important is that there will be many more individuals with chronic illness. The Milliken Institute offered a white paper a few years ago on chronic illnesses and noted that nearly one half of Americans had one or more chronic illnesses, most of them preventable and  which were costing the economy over $1 trillion per year and rapidly rising.  

These are diseases like diabetes with complications, heart failure, cancer, or chronic lung disease. What is apparent is that they are mostly due to adverse lifestyles. Eating a non-nutritious diet -- and too much of it combined with a sedentary existence leads to obesity. One third of Americans are overweight and another one third are frankly obese. Add to this chronic stress and that 20% still smoke and there is an effective recipe to produce chronic illnesses. Chronic illnesses will make up a greater and greater proportion of all medical ailments as time goes on. And of course they are more difficult to manage, generally last a lifetime and are inherently expensive to treat (although there is much that can be done to reduce the costs of care.) 

A second driver of change is the aging of the population. The American society is growing older and just like a car:  “Old parts wear out.” Aging brings on visual and hearing impairments, mobility difficulties and diseases like osteoarthritis, Alzheimer’s and other chronic illnesses that, as best we know today, are not due to adverse lifestyles but are tied into the aging process. 

Another driver is the increasing demand for medical services. Perhaps this is saying the same thing another way. More aging and adverse lifestyles create more disease and the need for care. 

Consumerism is becoming – finally – more and more of a driver of change. Patients are coming to want and expect to be treated like a valued customer. Like the movie where he shouted “I can’t take it any more,” now “the patient is no longer willing to be patient any more.” What do the patients want? They want service, good service. They increasingly understand that quality and safety are not ideal so they are looking for and expecting high levels of quality & safety. Perhaps the most important one of all is respect, respect for their person, confidentially, and the quality of their care. But also patients want convenience & responsiveness. They don’t want to have to travel long distances, wait long times in the “waiting room,” nor be put on indefinite telephone hold. They want interaction by email and other electronic methods.   And finally, patients increasingly expect to have a closing of the information gap – they expect the playing field between patient and doctor to be much more level in the future. 

Professional shortages are also definite drivers of change in the delivery system. There have been shortages of nurse and pharmacists noted for more than a decade. More and more there is a shortage of primary care physicians (PCPs) and also general surgeons. These shortages are more acute in rural areas and urban poor areas.

Combined with shortages are changes in professional aspirations and lifestyles. More and more physicians want and expect to have more time for family and recreation. And they no longer want to run their own private practices. They prefer to be employed with little if any administrative burdens. Indeed the number of PCPs in a typical private practice arrangement has declined precipitously in recent years. And since so many patients coming to the ER today are uninsured, many physicians are no longer willing to take call unless on a contract with the hospital. Most physicians are willing to accept that some patients will be of limited means but they are not wiling to be overwhelmed with non paying patients.  

And among many other drivers of change is that patients will have greater requirements toward a direct share of costs. Today we have mostly “prepaid” health care, meaning that our insurance covers most everything, minus a low deductible or co-pay, from routine exams and well baby care all the way to a heart transplant. Among employer sponsored plans, there is an increasing push toward high deductible plans, with deductibles in the $1000-2000 range. Even some Medigap plans have high deductibles corresponding with much lower premiums.  

These are but a few of the drivers that will change the delivery of health care in dramatic ways in the years ahead. I discuss them in much more detail in The Future of Health Care Delivery – Why It Must Change and How It Will Affect You with data obtained through over 150 in-depth interviews of medical leaders from across the country. It is fair to expect that physicians, patients, hospitals, insurers and employer/government sponsors will be challenged to adapt.

My next post will examine what these drivers of change will actually cause to happen to the delivery system.

 

 

Complex, Chronic Illnesses Last a Lifetime and Consume 70% of the Healthcare Dollar

Medical care is organized to treat acute conditions but the need today is to prevent, diagnose and treat chronic illnesses. Unfortunately, we are sorely lacking in a good chronic care management system. this will be the first in a series of six posts on this issue.

Our medical care system has developed over decades and even centuries around diagnosing and treating acute illnesses such as pneumonia, a gall bladder attack or appendicitis. The internist gives an antibiotic for the pneumonia and the patient gets better. The surgeon cuts out the gall bladder or the appendix and the patient is cured. One patient; one doctor. But as the population ages, more and more individuals are developing what I will call complex, chronic diseases like heart failure, diabetes, chronic lung disease or cancer. These are diseases that once developed usually remain with the individual for life. These patients with chronic illnesses need a different approach to care. They need long term care, not episodic care. They need a multi-disciplinary, team-based approach where one physician serves as the orchestrater or quarterback and manages the myriad physician specialists and the other caregivers along with all of the tests and procedures to allow for a unified, coordinated care management approach. Not only are these diseases likely to last a lifetime, they are difficult to manage, have an adverse impact of both quality of life and mortality, and they are usually quite expensive to treat. Today 70% of our medical care expenditures go toward their treatment. As I will describe in detail later, it will take a new approach to organizing the care of these patients to both improve care and reduce the costs and this will require high quality health information technology.

However, it is valuable to first understand the implications of chronic disease. Most of us are just not aware that their incidence is rising - and rapidly. The Milken Institute (http://bit.ly/lGHFqP ) quantified some of these issues in a research report a few years ago. They evaluated cancer, diabetes [presumably type 2], hypertension, stroke, heart disease, pulmonary conditions and mental disorders. Here are some of the key findings:

• “More than 109 million Americans report having at least one of the seven diseases, for a total of 162 million cases.

• The total impact of these diseases on the economy is $1.3 trillion annually.

• Of this amount, lost productivity totals $1.1 trillion per year, while another $277 billion is spent annually on treatment.

• On our current path, in 2023 we project a 42 percent increase in cases of the seven chronic diseases.

• $4.2 trillion in treatment costs and lost economic output.

• Under a more optimistic scenario, assuming modest improvements in preventing and treating disease, we find that in 2023 we could avoid 40 million cases of chronic disease.

• We could reduce the economic impact of disease by 27 percent, or $1.1 trillion annually; we could increase the nation's GDP by $905 billion linked to productivity gains; we could also decrease treatment costs by $218 billion per year.

• Lower obesity rates alone could produce productivity gains of $254 billion and avoid $60 billion in treatment expenditures per year.”

To me the most telling and important finding is that “each has been linked to behavioral and/or environmental risk factors that broad-based prevention programs could address.” Restated, we as individuals need to take responsibility for our own health. Not every chronic illness is preventable, but most are. It is up to us to eat a nutritious diet in moderation, exercise our bodies, seek ways to reduce chronic stress and avoid tobacco. These four steps will make a huge difference in our health and our lives. Adding in dental hygiene, avoiding sexually transmitted diseases, using seat belts and not drinking and driving will further prevent many illnesses. Many do not appreciate either that following a more appropriate lifestyle will actually slow the normal aging process that ultimately leads to many of these chronic illnesses.

Meanwhile, when chronic illness does strike, it is imperative to have a single care provider take responsibility for care coordination. Someone to not only recommend tests, procedures, images and specialist visits but who will actively ensure that each provider is properly attuned to the patient’s needs and that all of the information is collected and aggregated in a meaningful manner. When this is done the quality of care rises markedly, many fewer adverse events occur, the patient is more satisfied and the costs of care are dramatically reduced. In most cases, a primary care physician is the appropriate one to coordinate care although sometimes a specialist is better equipped for this role (e.g., a very complex cancer treatment plan). To be effective, the PCP or specialist needs to have not only the willingness and interest but also the time available to actually do the care coordination – time that is not available for most PCPs today. This coupled with limited digitized health information leads to today’s inadequate care of many individuals with chronic illnesses. In future posts I will describe today’s problems with lack of care coordination and how it can be corrected.

I wonder what others think abut why the problem of chronic illnesses and the need for care coordination is just not well recognized?

Your Lifestyle Can Prevent Sudden Cardiac Death

Adhering to a moderate yet healthy lifestyle can reduce the risk of sudden cardiac death by about 90% according to a new study. It is well known that high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes correlate with coronary artery disease. Life style factors do as well – a combination of a Mediterranean style diet, moderate regular exercise, appropriate weight and non smoking all correlate with less coronary artery disease, less stroke, less high blood pressure, less diabetes, less cancer and multiple other chronic conditions and lower (or later) mortality overall.

These same factors have now been demonstrated to also reduce risk for sudden cardiac death, i.e., a sudden arrhythmia that leads to death in less than an hour from symptom onset.
S. E. Chiuve, etal of Harvard and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston (JAMA, July 6, 2011, p62) evaluated sudden cardiac death (SCD) among 82,000 participants in the Nurses Health Study between 1984 and 2010. 321 individuals had SCD during those 26 years at an average age of 72.

The authors set out four criteria for low risk lifestyles: not smoking, BMI <25, exercise >30 minutes per day and being in the top 40th percentile of the alternate Mediterranean diet score. In essence, the latter is a diet rich in fresh vegetables and fruits, nuts, whole grains, legumes and fish with moderate intake of alcohol.

The results were clear. The more risk factors, the greater the rate of SCD. Stated differently, “a low risk life style (not smoking, exercising regularly, having a prudent diet and maintaining a healthy weight) was linearly and inversely associated with risk of SCD among women.” Those women who had all four low risk lifestyle attributes experienced a 92% lower risk of SCD compared to those who had no low risk attributes. This suggests that the vast majority of SCD could be prevented by life style modifications.

The study authors point out that although 80% of women do not smoke today, adherence to the other three factors is low. Less than 40% of middle aged women have a BMI <25, 25% drink light to moderate alcohol and only 22% exercise regularly. And although the data on diet habits is limited, a simple observation of what is purchased in the supermarket is telling.

It is evident from this study – and many others – that managing lifestyle factors can prevent serious chronic illnesses including coronary artery disease, cancer, stroke, high blood pressure and diabetes along with sudden cardiac death. This is true even for those with a genetic predisposition – “your genes need not direct your fate.”

Bringing Down the Costs of Medical Care

It is currently popular for government officials to single out the insurance companies for the rising cost of healthcare. Not that the insurers are without fault but the real reasons for cost increases are rarely addressed and therefore not appreciated. We are a country with an aging population (“old parts wear out”) and of many adverse behaviors (e.g., overweight, sedentary lifestyle, stress and 20% still smoke.) Combined, these are driving a rapid increase in chronic diseases such as diabetes type 2, cardiovascular disease including heart attacks, heart failure and strokes, high blood pressure, and cancer.

These are illnesses that, once developed, are usually with the individual for life, have a major impact on quality of life and are inherently expensive to treat. The Milken Institute did a comprehensive study of chronic diseases. Among their findings: 109 million Americans have a chronic illness now [that’s about one third of us!] and many have more than one for a total of 162 million. The costs of care today are about $275 million and the total economic costs are well over a trillion dollars per year in lost productivity, etc. They estimate that we are on a track for a 42% increase in these chronic diseases by 2023 (as a result of aging and behaviors,) not that long from now. And if we do nothing to change the way we care for these patients, the costs of medical care will be $790 billion and the total economic costs will be over 4 trillion dollars.

There are two things to do to reverse this trend. These are illnesses that by and large are caused by our behaviors or are the result of aging. We can’t stop aging. So, the first step is to have an active program in behavior modification. Easier said than done, of course but here are some principles. We need to individually accept responsibility for our own health. But we need to understand what we are doing and how it impacts us over the long term. Government can help here with educational programs, rules about school lunches, requiring restaurants to post calorie and fat contents, labeling food packages with a more realistic total calorie assumption (today packages imply that the average person needs a 2000 calorie diet) and other steps. Incentives, primarily monetary ones, can have a big impact. Incentives need to be large enough to be useful yet focused enough to drive toward the desired end. Our employer can help with wellness programs to assist us to stop smoking, loose weight, improve our nutrition or deal with stress more effectively. The incentive here can be asking the employee who is successful to pay a lower portion of their health insurance premium. Insurers can create incentives directly for following a healthier lifestyle by lowering premiums for those who don’t smoke or are at a reasonable weight.

The second major step is to ensure that those who do have a chronic illness get very good care coordination. Unfortunately, this is just not the case for most patients today. They end up with multiple doctors, each doing their own thing, excess specialist consultations, too many medications, unnecessary tests and procedures and sometimes even unneeded hospitalizations. This drives up the cost of care dramatically. When one has a primary care physician that takes the time to fully coordinate all the elements of care, the use of specialists declines as do tests, procedures and hospitalizations and drug therapy is well managed.

Unfortunately, most primary care physicians have too many patients under their care to allow adequate time for prevention sessions or the time needed for care coordination. They need to care for fewer patients meaning they will need to receive a higher fee for each visit and this must include a reasonable payment for preventive activities and coordination efforts. Added to this they need to be paid to take the time to respond to emails and to use other technologies that can keep the patient out of the office unless really necessary. Some docs are doing just this by limiting their practice to about 500 patients (rather than the usual 1200-1400) and charging a flat fee for all care for a year. Others are refusing to accept insurance, both commercial and Medicare, and instead are billing the patient just as a lawyer or accountant or other professional would. The billing includes time spend in prevention and coordination. These may well be the future of primary care reimbursement and a means to assist the patient to first prevent chronic illnesses from occurring and second to assist in good coordination of the care when one does develop.

But all of this raises critical questions. What should and what will government do to help us modify our behaviors? Will insurers be allowed and will they accept the responsibility of a two tiered premium pricing system? Will employers accept the added chore of developing wellness programs? Will physicians, even if they are offered adequate payments, actually spend the time needed for good prevention and good care coordination? And, most importantly, will we as citizens accept our responsibility to lead a reasonably healthy lifestyle?

Healthcare Reform Misconception - Costs are rising because of the avarice and greed or just unregulated “bad guys,” including drug and technology com

Each of these deserves some approbation and bears some responsibility at the margin, but these are not the major reasons why costs are rising. But it seems that politicians, the media and so many others seem to believe what’s convenient rather than what is accurate.

The real culprits are: 1) the poor coordination of care of those with chronic illness resulting in excess visits to specialists, excess tests, unneeded procedures and even hospitalizations, 2) overuse [often as a result of #1] of expensive drugs, devices or procedures when they are not needed or truly necessary or when a generic drug, older device or no procedure at all would be more than adequate and appropriate, 3) a wide divergence in the use of medical care and technologies based on geographic region with no evidence that those who receive “more” have better health or longer lives 4) an aging population [older people get sick more often and consume more medical care]; and 5) physicians/patients/relatives who are unwilling to accept the inevitability of death and insist on “one last try.”

6) A big driver of high costs is preventable errors. We know that at least 100,000 people die annually of safety lapses like developing a hospital-acquired infection, drug errors, or procedural errors. Many more are harmed. This lack of quality greatly adds to costs.

7) One of the biggest drivers of increasing costs over time will be our own behaviors along with a lack of preventive medicine or wellness programs. We are a nation that is obese, has poor nutrition, lacks exercise, and is over-stressed. We have dangerous habits of smoking, drinking and driving, and not wearing seat belts. Too many of us do not get immunized to common yet often lethal infections such as influenza, nor do we practice good dental hygiene. We avoid basic screenings to detect high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or cancer. Unfortunately, many government policies actually aid and abet us in maintaining these behaviors.

Add these together and our costs are higher than most other developed countries.