| |||||||||
November 25, 2008The Time Has Come for Comprehensive Health Reform: Statement from The Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
From The Commonwealth Fund: As the new administration prepares for office, the nation finds itself in a time of historic political opportunity. With a large majority of Americans seeking profound change, the moment has come for the United States to take the necessary steps to ensure the health security of all Americans and put the nation's health care system on a path to high performance. The Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System urges the President and Congress to move quickly to enact comprehensive reform. We must move away from our fragmented, dysfunctional system to a more rational, high-performing one, and we must replace our broken fee-for-service payment schemes with methods for providing incentives for better care---so that we can "bend the curve" of health care spending. Key Elements of Reform: Coverage, Organization, Payment Reform, and Leadership Many believe, as the Commission does, that a critical step toward achieving a high performance health system is to provide insurance coverage to all Americans. But equally essential are bold actions that simultaneously improve the quality and efficiency of health care delivery---so that we improve the lives of Americans, alter the trajectory of health care costs, and make it easier for patients to obtain the care they need and providers to practice the best of modern medicine. Those steps include: changing the way we pay for care to reward hospitals and physicians for providing high-quality, high-value care; organizing the health care system to ensure that every patient has accessible and coordinated care; investing in the infrastructure required to reach and raise benchmark levels of performance; and providing national leadership to mobilize all parts of the health system.
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
