Sebelius Speaks to Big Challenges

Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of HHS, was interviewed recently by the New England Journal of Medicine on the challenges faced by implementation of the Affordable Care Act. And rightly, she spoke of the upsides in leveraging technology and payment mechanisms to reduce costs through preventative care. Despite her forecast of 19,000 new providers coming into the system in the next five years, this pales in the shadow of the current need and future capacity once ACA shifts into the next phase of care provision. A less than three percent increase in capacity, not including the loss due to retirees, isn't going to cut it, so the only remedy is to leverage technology to support preventative care delivery in the hopes of reducing chronic illness, and the burdens that it brings our health care system and improve efficiency on the administrative side.

Specifically, she believes that "refocusing health interventions at an earlier stage, placing more focus on health and wellness strategies, would help reduce demand and promote population health." She spoke of enabling health professionals other than doctors to increase their scope of care delivery, such as allowing "nurses to practice up to the skill level of their training. . . . We could put some incentives on the table to encourage that discussion."

There is no one answer to improving care capacity, but HIT should be a significant part of HHS' plan.

Full interview here: http://healthpolicyandreform.nejm.org/?p=13542&query=TOC