MoneyCare Starring Billy Beane
It looks like Michael Lewis may have his next besteller, a team of doctors take on the system by using a statistical approach to health care.
So what the hell am I talking about?
It seems Oakland A's GM Billy Beane is bored with baseball and Eric Chavez's aching back and decided to tackle the health care system. In this NY Times Op-Ed piece along with former presidential candiate John Kerry and former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, they call for a plan to rely more on medical evidence rather than guts, instincts and experience to chart the medical course for a patient.
It is no surprise then that the United States spends more than twice as much per capita on health care compared to almost every other country in the world — and with worse health quality than most industrialized nations. Health premiums for a family of four have nearly doubled since 2001. Starbucks pays more for health care than it does for coffee. Nearly 100,000 Americans are killed every year by preventable medical errors. We can do better if doctors have better access to concise, evidence-based medical information.
I'm not really sure how anyone could disagree, except perhaps Dusty Baker. It would seem with the tools at hand (computers and the Internet), that a structured system where diagnoses and their prescriped treatments charted against their effectiveness would be a valuable tool for any doctor that is still coherent enough to power up a computer.
We can then have websites and forums like medicalprospectus.com, themedicaltimes.com, etc where a bunch of armchair doctors could argue from the safety of their own internet connection about the appropriate treatment for a patient.
"Hey, Dr. Jones, what were you thinking prescriping strengthening exercises when a debridement is effective 50.9% of the time, compared to 49.8% for exercises. You're a loser. Go die."
(Dr. Hecht is going to nail me on that one...I'm sure)
It is an interesting article and certainly something, along with getting all medical records online, that should be pursued immediately in this country.
In the meantime, I have a few domain names to register.
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