I’ll be liveblogging next week on both this blog and as a guest blogger at the World Health Care blog. Should have an interesting mix of podcast and commentary on consumerism and health.
If you’re in DC, please stop by and say hello.
I’m pleased to announce that we’ve recently confirmed that Consumer-focused Healthcare will be blogging at the World Health Care Congress April 21-23 in Washington DC.
I’m personally excited to meet a number of the luminaries and hope to set up some podcasts during the event.
Please let me know if any of you will be in attendence– I’d love to catch up.
Another terrific day at the National Consumer Driven Healthcare summit in DC.
Today really seemed to bring home why CDHP appears to have stalled: it is neither for nor by consumers.
Dan Spirek from Trizetto got it right when he said “Consumers didn’t ask for consumer-driven healthcare. No one wants more financial risk”. Again we heard that consumerism isn’t about CDHP nor is it about those who are really sick and driving high cost. For consumerism to be truly effective, it needs to engage all of us in the process of choice and accountability in healthcare– and this is likely to start with ambulatory care and with significant support of the physician community. We had a more extended conversation with Dan that will be posted later.
Sara Collins from Commonwealth Fund went through quite a bit of survey data highlighting how badly CDHP performs–I found a number of their conclusions misleading, as perception doesn’t equal reality, and I didn’t find a number of the selected metrics particularly useful (I’m picky about my metrics)
Terrific first day at the National Consumer Driven Healthcare Summit here in DC.
I attended 2 different sessions today, a mini-conference on Convenient Care (retail clinics) and the opening day of the full Consumer Driven Healthcare Summit
The moods were very different.
The Convenient Care Association had a small, but very enthusiastic group. Growth projections are enormous—from an estimated 500 or so retail clinics today to somewhere around 5-6000 clinics in the next 5 years. The conversation was around emerging business models in what appeared to be less of a Wild West than such growth expectations would lead you to expect—the atmosphere here was collaborative and determined, as the industry prepares to proactively address concerns on the part of physicians and insurers, heading off an escalation of regulatory and other challenges. We’ll have an update post on this session in subsequent posts.
The broader conference had a mood that was a bit more somber—it was clear that the first wave of CDHP had passed and wide-eyed enthusiasm about the plans and their impact has clearly been replaced by operational and policy concerns about how to bring consumerism into the broader healthcare system. Keynote speakers Jamie Robinson and Paul Ginsberg (interview will be posted soon) made it very clear that the initial wave of CDHP had passed and that the financial-only plans were not going to accomplish what early enthusiasts had claimed. To date, there has been about 5% penetration of the plans, and this has been accompanied by significant policy and consumer concerns around their ultimate impact.
What is more clear is that consumerism as a movement is here to stay, and that it is slowly permeating the broader health insurance/ payment industry. It is also clear that the movement to date has not yet reached sufficient mass to have moved the provider industry—and the provider industry is proving able to change practice approaches in response to incentives—but we have not yet changed the incentives to align provider incentives with desired provider practices. If consumerism is to succeed–and the winds of change are pushing for it– engagement of the consumer and the provider community with real incentives for appropriate change will need to be tied in seamlessly to the payment mechanisms.
I’m flying out to the Consumer Driven Summit tonight and look forward to meeting those who reached out over the last few weeks.
I’ll be blogging about topics covered and people I come across and will have a series of interviews to be podcasted after the summit.
If others of you will be there, please reach out and introduce yourselves.
I’ll be attending the 2nd National Consumer Driven Healthcare Summit in Washington, DC Sept 26-28. I’d be delighted to meet any of my readers that will also be attending, so please let me know if you will also be in town.
Also, today (Friday the 17th of Aug) is the last day to receive the early bird discount– so if you’re planning on coming, but haven’t signed up yet, today may be the day to confirm. All details are at http://www.consumerdrivensummit.com/
Consumer-focused healthcare will be looking to expand its horizons with some interviews and potentially some podcasts from attending luminaries. Please let me know if there is anyone in particular you would like to hear from on the list of attendees.
Already on the docket is a conversation with Mary Kate Scott, author of Health Care in the Express Lane: The Emergence of Retail Clinics, who will share her perspectives on future changes coming out of the retail clinic boom.
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