A while back I noted that MassINC had put up a page of articles on the big issues of 2006, to satisfy your every wonky desire. Chris of Left Center Left suggested that folks split up duties and report back to the community on what we found, so here’s my brief rundown of the health care articles.
- Unmanaged Care by Michael Jonas goes into the intersections of health care costs and quality. Here’s a money quote for you:
âThe rate at which health care produces really serious defects would drive a for-profit businessout of town in about six months,â says Mark Chassin, chairman of the department of health policy at Mt.Sinai School of Medicine in New York and a leader in the movement to bring quality improvements to US health care. “Quality is really, really mediocre, across the board, so simply putting the care back into the hands of the doctors wonât do the trick.”
Basically, health care is provided via piecemeal, instead of as a whole job, so providers actually benefit — however unintentionally — from doing bad work. The upshot of the whole article is that providers and payers should insist on a holistic, integrated approach to health care, which would result in better care and lower costs.
- Robert Keough wonders if MA’s booming health care sector holds the rest of our economy hostage. Folks are right to say that health care costs are not a zero-sum game for the local economy, but isn’t there a pretty awful imbalance?
- Nursing shortage: Speaking of the growing health care sector, we’re not finding enough nurses, leading to, yes, mediocre health care! Now, I’m not sure the best way to deal with this is through legislation of mandatory nurse/patient ratios, as the Massachusetts Nurses Association is trying to do. That being said, one has to wonder if going lean on nurses isn’t penny-wise and pound-foolish; if problems that a nurse could handle are neglected, mightn’t they turn into more serious problems later?
- Mass. is #9 in overall public health, which includes cancer, infectious disease, traffic fatalities (quite low!), etc.
- Mass. is #5 in percentage of folks under 65 with health insurance, 87.9%. Good, and that number will probably drop with the new law. The question is whether it puts individuals — never mind the state — in the poor house.
