Company Tries Common Sense Approach To Improving Health Care

A California-based health care company has found some common sense approaches to improving care while cutting costs for its Medicare customers.

For example, CareMore offers free rides to the doctor’s office to avoid missed visits; they clip toenails to make sure patients don’t trip on rugs; they’ve set up a wound center to ensure a small cut doesn’t lead to an amputated foot in diabetic patients. These sound like little things, but the company says they’ve had a major impact.

In fact, CareMore reports overall costs are 18 percent lower than the industry average and hospitalization rates are 24 percent below average. The company also points to hospital stays that are 38 percent below normal and amputation among diabetics are an astounding 60 percent lower than average.

CareMore operates 26 centers across the Southwest, with more than 50,000 Medicare Advantage patients. But its philosophy could be spreading now that the massive health care company, Wellpoint, Inc., bought CareMore for $800-million, with 34-million patients nationwide.

The Atlantic: The Quiet Health-Care Revolution
Healthcare Savvy: Share and Compare Your Health Costs
Here & Now: Wellpoint Hires Supercomputer “Watson” To Help Diagnose Patients

Guest:

Adrian Slywotzky, co-author of “Demand: Creating What People Love Before They Know They Want It“

We welcome comments from all of our listeners. Post below. Please stay on topic and be civil. Comments may be moderated by us, but you are solely responsible for the content of your comments.

http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp

I’m having a hard time keeping myself in the bounds of appropriate language here. An insurance company wants to insert a monitoring device in my home? Uh huh. Have these people heard of privacy?
http://gregorycamp.wordpress.com/ Greg Camp

The company wants to regulate what carpet I have? Does no one else have a problem with this?

http://www.facebook.com/people/Adrienne-Samuels/1653935215 Adrienne Samuels

You sure didn’t hear the article that I heard. Seems to me that choosing to prevent disaster as CareMore does it, is voluntary. Would you have all of the people who use medic-alert systems to call 911 when they get into trouble invasion of privacy?

Anonymous

I like this story. We need much more focus on preventable health instead of waiting until people get sick and then treating them. http://michaelmaczesty.blogspot.com/2011/06/5-of-americans-hogging-health-care.html
Anonymous

I am delighted that CareMore has dusted off Preventative Medicine. It’s only been around (and mostly ignored) for about 40 years. The original ethos of Harvard Community Health was based in Preventative Care before the system got corrupted by the money machine of pharmaceutical and hospital businessmen. The fact that CareMore is ‘for profit’ does not bode well for those who actually do get critically ill or have multiple conditions already. I would have liked to hear from someone who was representing their experience with CareMore rather than just hearing from a business man, whose bias is obvious.

As for those who worry about insurance companies telling them what rugs to have in their home, you already have them dictating how your car is built and your home is built. It’s called a civil society. It’s also not domination; it’s health education. Education and regulation for the benefit of your own well being is responsible regulation. If you disagree, there are plenty of places on the planet where there is absolutely no regulation. I would advise you buy a weapon if you actually go to live in one of them.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Adrienne-Samuels/1653935215 Adrienne Samuels

I would like to suggest that CareMore consider providing its members with lists of foods that have been found to be toxic to many; and follow that with a bit of nutritional education. MSG and aspartame — both containing neurotoxic amino acids –come immediately to mind as food additives that are known to trigger migraine headache and more.
Michael C. Huntington M.D.

Using private insurance companies (Medicare Advantage) will always allow cherry picking and exclusion of people who need care the most. Instead go for a publicly based single-payer system that cuts out 20% of the cost because it cuts out the administrative burden of private insurance companies as they function in the United States.

Preventative care should not be sold as a way to reduce overall costs. Preventative care reduces suffering but not overall costs. The logical extreme is that people who do not get good preventative care die early and thereby do not incur the long-term expenses of aging. We as a nation however should be very interested in reducing suffering and improving the overall health of our nation. These two goals are well worth investing in prevention.

Good public health and prevention requires everyone and nobody out, only achievable with single-payer systems such as most of the industrialized world enjoys.

Michael C. Huntington M.D.
retired radiation oncologist
member of physicians for a national health program
Robin

hello there.. just jumping in to say our guest was not a “business man” but a management consultant whose job it is to look at businesses critically.. that’s all!

Carry on,
Robin
Jen

I also agree how important preventative care is – so many health problems could be avoided if people visited the doctor on a regular basis and received FULL physical exams, nutrition counseling, etc. I do this for patients at my clinic…but I am a VETERINARIAN!

http://www.ThePreventiveVet.com The Preventive Vet

Well said Jen. As a veterinarian myself, I too feel that we spend more time in the room with our patients/clients. And that we also spend more time on the phone with them (the clients) too – doing ‘callbacks’ and discussing plans/test results. What is sad though is that, even in a 30-40 minute appointment, a lot of aspects of preventive care just can’t be fully covered. And certainly the concepts of risk assessment and pet emergency prevention are barely ever touched on. Much of my veterinary clinical practice had been spent in emergency medicine, and it got truly disheartening to see the same preventable emergencies over and over again. Especially as the economy started to tank and pet owners were less able to afford the level of care that is often available, and necessary, in veterinary ERs/ICUs. I suspect that human ER/ICU physicians get similarly discouraged to see the high frequency of preventable accidents, illnesses, and other emergencies. Prevention should always be the goal – better for the client (pet owners in our case, insurance companies in the case of human medicine) and better for the patient (pet or person). I so believe in the importance of prevention that I started a business and blog around it, check it out. http://www.ThePreventiveVet.com. Where do you practice?

Dwayne King

I think talking about this as “preventative medicine” is missing some of the bigger picture. The telling line, for me, was “Compliance isn’t a patient problem, it’s the doctors problem.” That’s a huge change in thinking that goes beyond preventative medicine.
http://www.facebook.com/bobby.gladd Bobby Gladd

I’ll have to note this on my REC blog. I’m eyeball deep in the federal ACO Final Rule at the moment (“Accountable Care Organizations”)
Alfred

Too much emphasis on “treatment” the problem rather than focusing on “prevention”. In the long run, educating the masses will result in better care of their bodies and minds.
However, in the American system of capitalism and rampant consumerism, there is no money to be made in healthy people. Allopathic medicine is a business. And being in business is all about making money.
Doctor comes from the Greek word for “teacher”. There roles have changed over time from teacher to now being the middle men in the game of dispensing drugs for Big Pharma.

The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human body, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease. Thomas Edison…

One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine —- William Osler
The field of Western medicine has become literally nothing but medicine. Doctors are on their way out, to be replaced by self-serve pharmaceutical vending machines. ~Grey Livingston