Spring 2006 Consumer Directed Health Care
Conference and Expo (CDHCC) and the National Health, Wellness and Prevention
Congress (NHWPC)
May 8-10, 2006, at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco
Conference Info: For more information about the CDHCC, go to
www.cdhcc.com. For more about the NHWPC, go
to www.nhwpc.com.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Morning keynote, Day 3: Today’s keynote wasn’t really a traditional keynote
speech, but instead a six-person panel discussion on "Turbocharging Consumerism"
in consumer-driven health care. The panel--made up of doctors (including Dr.
John Nelson, immediate past president of the AMA), health administrators,
consultants and health care analysts--came up with a laundry list of "must have"
factors for a strong consumer-driven health care system.
They include:
- Better information and expert advice for consumers.
- Better record-keeping and a streamlining of health care administration.
- A system of integrated databases that combines lots of information into the
communication infrastructure.
- Transparency on costs and quality (for example, giving consumers specific
information on the best and most cost-effective place to have a heart value
replaced).
- Multiple channels of personalized messaging and information that speaks directly
to consumers and their specific needs.
- Messaging to consumers to help them manage costs.
- In the end, health care that meets people’s needs--the best care at the best
value for the dollars they are spending.
The session I wish I could have gotten to: I don’t know why this was scheduled
for 4 p.m. on Day 3 of a three-day conference, but the final keynote was titled
"Getting to Nirvana in Customer-centric Health Care: How Do We Get There?" The
description in the event guide said to "come and listen to leaders at the
forefront … of the transformation in the health care model for a detailed,
no-holds-barred ‘inside baseball’ discussion of who needs to do what to get
there." Great-sounding session, but with so many attendees leaving earlier
Wednesday, I doubt many people got to hear any of it.
Advice for conference organizers--less is more: If I ran this conference, the
one thing I would do is limit panel discussions to no more than three panelists.
Too many of the sessions had four, five or even six experts trying to discuss a
topic in 70 minutes or so. That’s just not enough time for so many panelists,
and in many cases, presentations and questions from the audience had to be cut
very short to accommodate everyone. Fewer people on the panels would surely make
for a more fruitful and meaningful discussion where everyone’s expertise really
gets to be heard.
If you missed this conference: There is a companion conference planned for
December 11-13 at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. Called "Consumer
Health World," the conference will include all the elements of the one in San
Francisco, and more, organizers say.
--JH
Date: Tuesday, May 9, 2006
Morning keynote, Day 2: If you think that the current U.S. government
health care system is a mess, then this conference is for you. Speaker after
speaker, and panel after panel, hammered home the point that government
involvement in health care leads to higher costs, less coverage, more
bureaucracy and a dearth of innovation.
Dr. Regina Herzlinger, the Nancy R. McPherson professor of business
administration at the Harvard Business School, whom Money magazine labeled the
"godmother of consumer-driven health care," talked about the increasing role
consumers will play (and need to play) in health care. "With any consumer-driven
product," she said, "when consumers do the buying, the price goes down and the
quality goes up. ... When people know what their costs are, they change their
behavior in very intelligent ways."
And here is a red-meat quote from Herzlinger (for everyone who has ever had a
reasonable new procedure denied by some unseen health plan bureaucrat): "We need
to get rid of the third-party micromanaging of the system. It kills innovation
and the ability to find ways to do it better."
Jumping into the consumer-driven plan pool: At a panel discussion on
"Providing a Total Integrated Consumer-driven Health Plan," Michael Kraupp of
St. George, Utah-based SkyWest Airlines (one of the few profitable U.S. air
carriers, he noted) said the company has 15,000 employees and started offering a
high-deductible consumer-driven plan two years ago. The airline now has some 850
employees in the plan. It took a little pushing to get people to change plans,
however. Kraupp said that SkyWest initially offered to put $250 into a health
savings account for each employee who changed plans, but had to up it to $500 to
get people to make the move. The benefit? The company has had no cost increases
for its high-deductible health plan in two years.
Quote of the day: From Sally Pipes, president and CEO of "free-market
think tank" the Pacific Research Institute, on Canada's single-payer health care
system: "Canada has the best health care that the 1970s can provide."
More on Canada’s health care system: Pipes also said that between 1993
and 2005, the wait to see a specialist in Canada after being referred by a
primary care physician went from 9.3 weeks to 17.7 weeks. Some 3.2 million
Canadians, she said, are on a waiting list for a primary care doctor--a wait
that can take up to five years.
Buzzwords of the conference: "Aligned incentives," which means making sure that
the receiver and the provider of health services are both working toward the
same goal.
--JH
Date: Monday, May 8, 2006
Day 1: Spring is the season for conferences. In fact, there are so many
workforce-oriented conferences in April and May that it is difficult attending
all of them without some overlap. So it was with the WorldatWork meeting this
week in Anaheim, California, (Sunday through Wednesday) and the Consumer
Directed Health Care Conference meeting in San Francisco. Attending both means
missing a little of each, and sometimes that means missing something good.
In the case of the CDHCC, that meant missing Newt Gingrich, the former speaker
of the House and the morning keynote speaker on Day 1. These days, Gingrich is
involved with the Center for Health Transformation, an organization he founded
that is "a collaboration of public- and private-sector leaders dedicated to the
creation of a 21st-century intelligent health system that saves lives and saves
money," according to the CHT Web site. You can check out the organization
yourself at
www.healthtransformation.net.
Although I missed Gingrich’s speech, there is an article on his Web site that
mirrors the theme of the San Francisco conference. In it, he argues that
transforming payment models for investments in technology may be the push that
physicians and hospitals need to help build a better, less-expensive health care
system. "We must fundamentally reform the way physicians and other providers are
paid for their services, particularly to incentivize the adoption of health
information technology," Gingrich and co-author David Merritt write. "With as
many as 98,000 Americans still dying as a result of medical errors every year,
ridding the system of paper-based records and quickly adopting health
information technology will save lives and at the same time save money." He goes
on to point out that a 2005 study by the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention concluded that only 31 percent of hospital emergency departments and
17 percent of doctors’ offices have electronic health records to support patient
care.
--John Hollon
