Finding innovative ways to deliver health care has never been more important than it is today. How will an increasing number of people get quality care at a cost that the nation can afford? The answer isn't hard to figure out. It's innovation. Easier said than done, of course. Unlike many other industries, health care has remained highly fragmented, with a hierarchical culture resistant to change, and a payment system that rewards providers for quantity rather than quality of care. It has been slow to adopt technologies like electronic medical records that have the potential to make care more efficient and safer for patients. Even when new practices have been shown to improve care and reduce error, hospitals and doctors have been slow to adopt them.
You'll read of doctors, hospitals, insurers, researchers and cities that are all experimenting with novel methods to improve the quality, safety and effectiveness of care at a reasonable cost. Some are pioneering new delivery systems that encourage providers to coordinate patient care, rather than work at cross-purposes with little communication. Others are rigorously testing safety practices to determine how teams of caregivers can reduce adverse events and errors. Still others are mining medical records to identify patients who aren't taking their medications or might benefit from enrollment in a clinical trial.
And then there are all those attempts to give consumers the resources they need to stay healthier in the first place. That can mean things as simple as building more sidewalks and bike paths, or getting schools to bring back exercise at recess. Sometimes innovation means getting back to the basics.
