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| September 20th | The Medical Arms Race Syndrome Featuring: Jack Rowe MD, Former Aetna CEO | | October 15th | The Role of the Federal Government in Healthcare Featuring: Mark McClellan, MD | Technology is revolutionizing the way healthcare is delivered in the 21st Century. It is also promising huge financial rewards, not only to inventors but to medical practitioners. In the absence of market mechanisms or rules, the professional line between patient and provider or provider and community interest is not easy to draw.
For decades patients have benefited from cutting edge medical device, pharmaceutical, and biologic innovation - much of which has been generated by creative and talented experts here in the Upper Midwest. Rapid advances occur every day. Unfortunately, health economists attribute much of the increases in U.S. healthcare spending to technology - and have difficulty quantifying off-setting benefits.
Healthcare stakeholders have embraced the power of information technology as well, and hope for a future when the two - medical and information technology - can be seamlessly married to discovery and the clinical data produced by millions of medical events annually to ensure optimal health for all Americans at a price all can afford.
Standing in the way of this needed revolution, however, is the heavy burden of understanding medical investment decisions and defining the role of healthcare payment policy in rising healthcare costs. Increasing utilization, specialization, competition among institutional and individual providers, government payment and purchasing policies, and consumer expectations are just a few of the pressing policy issues.
If we don't understand them, we cannot influence them. As a regional policy collaborative, members of the National Institute of Health Policy (NIHP) believe that only at a community level can we as a society achieve this requisite understanding and the commitment to transformative change.
To better understand The Medical Arms Race Syndrome (MARS)--the interplay between technological innovation, market forces, the role of government, and rising healthcare costs--the NIHP will host a series of dialogues in the coming 24 months. The series will use the NIHP’s neutral, multi-stakeholder forum to highlight the policy barriers and opportunities imbedded in the healthcare technology revolution. It will culminate in a national conference that focuses on the future of the hospital and the promise of technology for changing where and how healthcare is delivered. “Where is My Nearest Healthcare Facility: Optimizing the Healing Power of Innovation.”
The MARS series will include local, regional, and national conversations with national experts in medical and health information technology who will help chart a vision for our community in concert with hospital leaders, public payers, civic leaders, physicians, ancillary health professionals, policy-makers and educators.
The kick-off event for this series – “The Medical Arms Race Syndrome: Defining the Problem” - will take place on July 13, 2006 at the University of St. Thomas Minneapolis Campus. The Citizens League April 2006 report on medical facility expansion in Minnesota provides a useful backdrop for the launch of this series and its authors will be present at the June event. | |
