Health care officials, grassroots organizations and lawmakers held a summit in Annapolis Monday and did what they have been doing for years ? lots of talk and little action.
They did appear to reach one consensus: Poor health care can cost businesses millions of dollars annually, and higher costs for care does not equate to better care.
The cost of care for a Medicare patient in the last two years of life could cost almost twice as much at Johns Hopkins Hospital as at Anne Arundel Medical Center, according to recent research conducted by the Dartmouth Medical School.
Part of the disparity was caused by differences in resources available to doctors and patients in different parts of the state, said Carolyn Clancy, director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
“But how do you reward the leading edge without leaving behind those without the resources to improve quality?” she said. Financial incentives for quality care, known as pay for performance, and electronic medical records could also help improve patient care, she said.
Martin Wasserman, executive director of MedChi, the state medical society, said physicians are wary of pay-for-performance rules and that doctors should be assured that any standards used to measure quality care are uniform to reduce the risk of malpractice suits.
“Instead of calling it pay for performance, we ought to have reimbursement rates that are true reimbursements, that reward for quality,” Wasserman said.
Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Secretary John Colmers said the differences in quality care among doctors and hospital systems was the result of “a lack of leadership” among doctors, patients and politicians.
Colmers said the models studied by the lawmakers and experts during Monday?s meeting presented some good ideas, but he said Maryland lacks the streamlined health care delivery system present in places such as Minnesota, Wisconsin and Canada. He suggested Maryland look to delivery models such as Kaiser Permanente and the Veterans Affairs administration for examples of quality, affordable care.
