In an hfm magazine web exclusive, Peter Orszag, recently nominated by President-elect Barack Obama to become director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), outlines a three-step approach to a better healthcare system.
“It’s clear that we have a payment system, especially within Medicare, that leads to more care rather than better care,” states Orszag. The three steps he sees as essential to reforming the system include dramatically expanding the health IT backbone, using the information that comes out of this IT backbone in a greatly enhanced comparative effectiveness effort, and implementing payment reform that gives providers incentives for more efficient care.
Orszag also discusses the vast differences in cost of care that occur within the U.S. healthcare system. He argues that the correlation between cost and quality often goes the wrong way, with higher cost providers not generating better outcomes than lower cost, more efficient providers. “How can we either get more for the money that we’re putting in or reduce the money that we’re putting in for the same health outcomes?” Orszag asks. He sees significant opportunities for either better outcomes or better savings in the variations that currently exist.
Orszag served as director of the Congressional Budget Office from January 2007 to November 2008, when he resigned his position to accept his nomination as director of OMB.
Read the article.
