Disruptive Health Care Technologies
At yesterday's meeting of The Colloborative in Minneapolis, the panel introduced a set of disruptive technologies that might be very helpful in improving America's health care sysrtem. The technologies represented by the panel were not new and included: joint insurer/provider systems; HSAs; venture funds to support new ideas in health care management; and the commerical health care clinic.
What made the panel most interesting for me were the assumptions that are behind these technologies:
1. Heatlh care is a business and the business aspects of health care are as noble in intent as the service aspects.
2. The health care system is constrained by the federal funding policies that are directed by Medicare. This is our money. As a free-market democracy we vote authority to our legistiators to management our money in a way that supports the common good. If we are unhappy with how that is going, we can insititute change through the electorial process. The country had done so in 1968 over foreign policy and in 1980 over domestic policy. Also, we may be doing it again in 2008 over foreign and domestic policies.
3. We need to manage health care for the common good and, while being supportive of groups at the margins of society, we should not ignore or mis-define the common good.
4. Disruptive technologies may be necessary to focus the health care system more directly on the common good.
5. Clear information must be provided to consumers of care and they should be trusted in their interpretation of that information so we can better evaluate disruptive technologies.
Jack