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The publication, "Hitting the 'Bulls-eye' in Health Reform: Controlling Chronic Disease to Reduce Cost and Improve Quality," offers five recommendations for how Congress could better improve quality and reduce spending over the long-term:
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"In order to improve health and reduce costs over the long-term, Congress must include adequate provisions to better prevent and manage chronic disease, which affects nearly half of Americans and accounts for seventy-five percent of overall health spending," said Ken Thorpe, Ph.D., PFCD Executive Director. "The current bills are a great start, but as this analysis shows, there is more work to be done and bolder action needed from Congress."
Thorpe continued, "To 'bend the spending curve,' we need comprehensive reform of the payment and delivery systems, creating a system that truly incentivizes high quality care through prevention, care coordination, and other efforts which have been proven to improve health and provide long-term cost savings."
About the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease:
The PFCD is a national coalition of more than 120 patient, provider, community, business and labor groups, committed to raising awareness of the number one cause of death, disability, and rising health care costs in the U.S.: poorly prevented and mismanaged chronic disease.
The PFCD's mission is to:
For more information about the PFCD and its partner organizations, please visit: http://www.fightchronicdisease.org.
-- Rollout evidence-based models for nationwide coordination of care in Medicare within the next three years; -- Immediately expand the types of treatments in Medicare that would be paid on a "value," not "volume," basis; -- Aggressively promote chronic disease prevention in the traditional health care system and beyond; -- Remove barriers patients face to avert the development and progression of chronic illness; and, -- Move from a paper-based system to a high-tech system that helps to coordinate care.
SOURCE Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease
