One of my favorite magazines is Fast Company, because it has some cutting ideas and interview with many leading, interesting people.
This month, in it's October issue it has an article called The Cure. This discusses how 3 hospitals in central Pennsylvania have reduced costs, improved health care, and replaced fee-for-service with pay-for performance (P4P). It discusses consistency, checklists. The concept relies on implementing what clinical data says works.
By the way, use IE, not Firefox. On Firefox I couldn't get it to stop repeating the ad, never getting to the content.
Sharon, having a medical background this system does have merit. It would cut out many unnecessary test, counter less referrals to the buddy doctor office and the old lets try this medication syndrome. It would improve in the sense that it would get to the point and not play around with people like a science project.
After seeing what my dad went through in the last 6 months of his life and emphasis placed often in the wrong place, I'd love to overhaul a lot of "systems".... I love the idea of fee-for-performance. I bet it would cut down on all the errors we tend to see in hospitals!
Frank - my earlier response to you went into la-la-land. Thanks for adding your medical perspective. Sure would be nice not to be guinea pigs.
Mary - oh, yes, I like fee for performance. Just as I'd like to see our legal system be loser-pay-all. I'd also like to see consistency in diagnosis and treatment.