Although the healthcare delivery system is as full of committed idealists as it ever was, the difference now is that the current healthcare system operates within an economically and politically driven milieu that prevents it from delivering what it is designed to provide: high-value healthcare services for the patients it serves. The healthcare economy creates major problems with the dominant fee-for-service payment system, enables the treatment of physicians as commodities, and stifles them from realizing their original motivations for choosing a career in medicine. To change this broken system, it is up to physician leaders to identify, treat and ultimately reform problems inherent in the current model.
Healthcare Economic Reform serves as both an educational overview of how the healthcare economy operates, and a step-by-step guide for physicians to follow in pursuit of making the delivery of healthcare more satisfying. With an insightful Foreword by Eric Weaver, DHA, MHA, Executive Director of the Institute for Advancing Health Value, this book addresses industry-wide problems and shifts the focus from reform of the delivery system to reform of the healthcare economy. How does this book give you an advantage? Knight shares key lessons gleaned from his 40-year career to not only provide a review of how the healthcare system operates, but also to arm physician leaders with actionable information to reform the healthcare economy and satisfy their own motivations for entering the field of medicine. Here are just some of the topics the author discusses in detail: The Unique Aspects of the Healthcare EconomyBusiness Models in Healthcare The Payment SystemDistortions in the Process of Exchange The Perverse Nature of the FFS Model Clinically Integrated Networks Shifting Risk Pricing in the Healthcare Economy Market Forces in the Healthcare Economy For-Profit vs. Not-for-Profit From Volume to Value Bundled Payments Accountable Care Organizations Correcting Defects in the Healthcare Economy Revealed by the COVID-19 Pandemic Care Process Design Clinical Practice Specific Recommended Actions If you're a physician leader, Healthcare Economic Reform: How and Why Physicians Must Lead Change Within Our Evolving Healthcare Economy will give you deeper understanding of the current healthcare economy, and the tools, wherewithal, and confidence to go about reforming it.