How can you drive down the cost of medical services? This is my final post based upon the MassMEDIC Annual Conference held on May 7th at the UMass Boston Campus.
The goal, per the conference, is not to bring down the aggregate cost of medical care for society. The drive is to bring down the per-patient cost, so that more people are served for the same aggregate dollars.
The task will not be easy. The aging population does not help. 75% of all U.S. medical costs are in the treatment of chronic diseases which proliferate with age. Additionally, medical devices, aside from being both cost justified and outcome efficient, will have to be marketed to emerging larger health care systems, as the individual or small-scale purchaser of medical devices in a fee-for-service system becomes far less typical.
Ways to reduce cost:
- Use big data. Look at patient behavior. How do you reward patients for good behavior? What does good behavior look like?
- Use that data to measure outcomes. Use big data to drive enrollment in trials.
- Work on alternate financing. Venture capital investment in this space is way down. Reliance should not be placed on crowd-funding, because retail investors will soon learn, as have VCs, that pay-offs can be scarce and deferred, and that risk in this space is high.
- Recognize the consummerization of health care. Patients will be called upon more and more to manage their own care. Devices much be made simpler and cost less to be delivered into the hands of the new class of practitioner: the patient.
What about ObamaCare? Not a lot of discussion, based upon what appears to be no conclusive data with respect to cost and outcomes. There is low expectation that collected premiums under the system will in fact cover costs, and certainly ObamaCare (and other regulatory initiatives such as statutory limitations on gifts to physicians, the medical device tax and payment reform), has created uncertainty in the device marketplace.