WASHINGTON — President Obama intends to nominate Massachusetts pediatrician Donald Berwick, known for his work to improve patient care, to oversee Medicare and Medicaid.
… Berwick is also president and chief executive of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, a nonprofit organization in Cambridge.
IHI does really interesting work on assessing care quality using a variety of measures and stats. They've been theorizing about how to help hospitals deliver better care at lower cost; presumably now Berwick will get to put those ideas to the test, on a massive scale.
This could be a big deal in ensuring the effectiveness and long-term solvency of Medicare and Medicaid, and therefore the entire federal budget.
Apropos of Massachusetts, here's some interesting and very succinct testimony from IHI's Don Goldmann on how we could start to contain health care costs.
stomv says
to head up the death panels with a guy known as Doctor Doom.
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p>Oh, and PS. That’s all made up. Teabagging is fun!
hubspoke says
and based apparently on appropriate expertise and accomplishment (Berwick may be an Obama supporter too, for all I know, but it’s immaterial here). Could this become a trend, i.e. appointments based on… merit?
lynne says
“What, what, what?”
masslib says
however, I think his cost containment measures scratch at the surface. Did you read this op-ed about Massachusetts adopting a state single payer plan?
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p>http://www.boston.com/bostongl…
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p>I’d like to see MA lead the way in this effort. As detailed in the op-ed, many of the supposed cost containment measures don’t produce the degree of results people are looking for. We pay twice as much for health care in this country then they do in say, France, where outcomes are much better. I think if we are serious about cost containment and of course, health care, MA should move to a state single payer plan, with supplemental insurance for those who want it.
lasthorseman says
Obamacare was about two things.
Denying care my parents had to my baby boomer generation
Diverting attention away from the financial theft of the US federal government.
mike-from-norwell says
will make you too popular on this board Charley.
charley-on-the-mta says
No, I agree with that point … although I think it’s very hard to know exactly how much benefit would accrue from that. Thing is, lawsuit settlements are not a big % of health care costs, and not really a part of rising costs per se.
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p>However, I could definitely accept that defensive medicine is part-and-parcel of the medical culture in the US, which would lead to using the supposedly “best-and-latest” technology, which jacks up costs.
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p>I’m not against tort reform just because Republicans are for it. I think the idea that it would magically contain health care costs all by itself is … uh … “optimistic”.
mike-from-norwell says
and see if having a fixed 6 figure cost in place for premiums every year might influence how you set your billing rates for your practice. Don’t think it is the magic bullet either, but it obviously isn’t an insignificant number.