Ten Key Health Reform Words

The clock. aligned with the computer, is key to reforming care, to increasing efficiencies, to saving time, and to improving outcomes.

Saving time, with proper computer use, and with doctors spending more time with patients, is key to improving health care efficiencies and to saving money.

That is the message I have sought to convey in my blog posts using the following key words.

• Health Reform - My blog’s slogan is “Where health reform, medical innovation, and medical practices meet.” Where they meet is at the clock, for time is a perishable asset. There is only so much time to spend with patients.

• Medical Innovation - There are always better, simpler, and less costly ways of doing things. These things, through they may be disruptive, invariably save time and make time for the right things.

• Primary Care Shortages - Despite arguments and substitutes to the contrary, an adequate supply of primary care doctors and more time to spend with patients is key to a better health system.

• Patient Engagement - Engaging patients by informing them what’s at stake for their health and what to do to improve their health is fundamental to more effective health reform.

• Concierge Medicine - Concierge physicians, with enough time to spend and listen to patients,may be key to better, more compassionate, more understanding care.

• Direct Pay Medicine - Physicians dealing directly with patients and patients paying directly for routine care while being covered for catastrophic events is key to future health reform.

• Health Savings Accounts - Employers ensure 160 million Americans. HSAs are a proven means of saving time and money for employers and workers.

• Self-Funded Corporations - These corporations can bypass government and state mandates and save time and money by short-circuiting 3rd party government and private bureaucracies.

• Women Physicians - As Margaret Thatcher said, “If you want something said, give it to a man. If you want something done, give it to a woman.”

• Consumer-Driven Care - We are a consumer-driven nation, and health care is for the benefit of consumers, not government, halth plans, hospitals, or physicians.