That’s why it’s great to see companies such as Virgin Healthmiles and Switch2Health (full disclosure, I work at Switch2Health) use the carrot system to motivate and reward users for physical activity. I hope this helps change behavior and has a better impact than punishing patients by not paying for treatment.

In a few weeks I will be in Washington D.C. for a series of meetings regarding the sharing of information garnered from a comprehensive breast cancer research program that we co-founded back in 2000 (The Clinical Breast Care Program).

We are also meeting with various leaders about a phenomenal group of neuroscientists who have successfully brought 43 people out of what had been determined to be persistent and irreversible vegetative states by combining a number of already approved modalities in a sort of neuro, but that is NOT what this response is about.

My knowledge of the work being done by people like Drs. Wayne Jonas of the Samuelli Institute and Dean Ornish of the Preventative Medicine Research Institute as well as my board position on the American Board of Holistic Integrative Medicine have allowed me to see not only the potential future of medicine but also the future of healing in our country. During my tenure at the Windber Research Institute, our scientists worked extensively in Europe and Asia on programs that were directed toward wellness, prevention, and early detection of disease. These programs have combined to form my vision of how managed care through patient advocacy can actually work for this country.

Recently we began partnership discussions with a group of facilitators who have successfully reduced insurance premiums in the businesses with whom they are working by as much as 30%. With a model program directed toward the principles of wellness that is coupled with an incentive program that rewards those responsible for encouraging these efforts, our health care dollars can finally begin to make sense.

What a great time to start a world changing program.

Warmly,

Nick

F. Nicholas Jacobs FACHE
International Director
SunStone Consulting, LLC

Most providers I would say feel that they are over worked and don’t get enough time to spend with patients so nothing really gets resolved. That may be more true in the office setting than in the hospital but hospital providers MD and RN don’t have any cake jobs either. Neither do administrators for that matter.

More concerning though from what I see is a growing lack of motivation to help people. Many providers again MD and RN that I see and have seen in many different facilities complain when patients come in with relatively minor injuries and illnesses. This is especially true when it is busy. I see patient’s pain not well treated and sometimes even ignored.

It seems to me that a growing problem with health care is that the qaulity of care is being ignored and productivity is taking first chair. We shouldn’t need incentives to get people and hospitals to do what they should be doing in the first place. We need more providers in the system that are actually interested in caring for patients. But to do that it takes time and resources. With the population aging as well as the health care work force we will need of us providers to provide more care which will drive up costs. In the end I think we all want better care. In our attempts to curb costs we may be imeding better care.

Perhaps we need to look at how we are allocating finite resources. For instance, are we adding any value by putting a pacemaker in a 95 year old that lives in a nursiing home that has dementia? No I don’t think so, so why do we spend money on patients like this? What value is added? Just because health care can do something doesn’t mean it should.