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January 31, 2008Achieving a US Health Care System 'Second to None' |
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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: All candidates running for office in 2008 should commit to an agenda to create a health care system for the United States that is second to none the American College of Physicians (ACP) said in its annual report on The State of the Nation's Health Care. In its report, ACP offers a five-point Candidate's Pledge designed to gain candidate commitments to support a series of recommendations. The recommendations result from a new ACP evidence-based policy paper, Achieving a High-Performance Health Care System with Universal Access: What the United States Can Learn from Other Countries. Propose immediate action items that President Bush and the 110th Congress can take to help - transition to a high performing health care system. Create workforce and payment polices to increase the numbers of primary care physicians, recognize the value of primary care, and support care organized through a patient-centered medical home. By providing ACP's members---125,000 internists and medical students nationwide---with a Web-based tool to evaluate the candidates' positions (www.acponline.org/advocacy/where_we_stand/election) based on ACP's benchmarks for a high performing system, it hopes to challenge the candidates to embrace ACP's proposals and to help our members evaluate the candidates accordingly. Primary care physicians would receive higher compensation commensurate with their critical role in helping patients get high quality and efficient care. Patients and their physicians would have electronic health records to provide them with evidence-based treatment guidelines, laboratory and diagnostic test results, medication lists, and medical histories at the point of care.
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