Innovation Follow Up: The Citizen's Action Report

Earlier this year I showcased the work of the Citizen's Health Task Force and their attempts to solicit ideas on ways to innovate in health care.

After 28,000 submissions (gotta love the power of the Internet), the Task Force quietly released their report today.

While there are more than 39 pages of recommendations, here's a quit snapshot copied directly from their site (Citizens Health Care Task Force, 2006):

1. Establish Public Policy that All Americans Have Affordable Health Care.
Americans should have a health care system in which everyone participates,
regardless of their financial resources or health status, with benefits that are
sufficiently comprehensive to provide access to appropriate, high-quality care
without endangering individual or family financial security.
• This public policy should be established immediately and implemented by 2012.

2. Guarantee Financial Protection Against Very High Health Care Costs.
No one in America should be impoverished by health care costs. A national public or
private program must be established to ensure:
• Participation by all Americans
• Protection against very high out-of-pocket medical costs for everyone
• Financial assistance to pay for this coverage to families and individuals based on
ability to pay

3. Foster Innovative Integrated Community Health Networks
• The federal government will provide leadership and financing for a national initiative
to develop and expand integrated public/private community networks of health care
providers. This recommendation should be accomplished through the following
actions:
• Focus first on people and localities where improved access to high quality care is
most needed. These networks would offer local residents – including, but not limited
to, low-income and uninsured individuals and people living in rural and underserved
areas – a source of coordinated health care.
• Identify governmental agencies at the national, state and local levels to coordinate
private and public funding sources currently dedicated to helping provide care to the
underserved by supplying the necessary information and leadership.
• Establish a public/private group or not-for-profit entity at the national level responsible
for advising the federal government on the community health care network’s
performance, funding streams, best practices and research.
• Expand and modify the Federally Qualified Health Center concept to accommodate
other community-based health centers and practices serving vulnerable populations
with special emphasis on families and prevention.

4. Define Core Benefits and Services for All Americans
Establish a non-partisan public/private group to define America’s core benefits and services and
update them on an ongoing basis
• Members will be appointed through a process defined in law that includes citizens
who represent a broad spectrum of the population, including, but not limited to,
patients, providers and payers.
• The group will be staffed by experts.
• Identification of core benefits and services will be made through an independent, fair,
transparent, and scientific process.
Within economic constraints and guided by evidence-based science and expert consensus
regarding the medical effectiveness of treatments, the group will define the core benefits and
services based on the following principles:
• Core health services will cover the continuum of care throughout the individual’s
lifespan.
• Health care encompasses wellness, preventive services, primary care, acute care,
prescription drugs, patient education, and the treatment and management of health
problems provided across a full range of inpatient and outpatient settings.
• Health is defined to include physical, mental, and dental health.
• Over time, this entity would appropriately take into consideration advances in clinical
science

5. Promote Efforts to Improve Quality of Care and Efficiency
The federal government will expand and accelerate its use of public programs for advancing
strategies that improve quality and efficiency across the health care system.
Using federally funded health care programs, the federal government will promote:
• Integrated health care systems built around evidence-based best practices
• Health information technologies and electronic health record systems
• Elimination of fraud and waste in administration and clinical practices
• Widespread availability of consumer-friendly information about health care services,
including transparency on prices, cost-sharing, quality, efficiency, and benefits
• Increased focus on health education, disease prevention and health promotion,
patient-provider communication, and patient-centered care
• Biomedical research aimed at improved quality and efficiency

6. End-of-life care should be fundamentally restructured so that people of all ages have increased access to these services in the environment they choose.
End-of-life care should be fundamentally restructured so that people of all ages have increased
access to these services in the environment they choose.
• Public and private payers should integrate evidence-based science, expert
consensus, linguistically appropriate and culturally sensitive end-of-life care models
so that health services and community-based care can better handle the clinical
realities and actual needs of patients of any age and their families.
• Public and private programs should develop and support training for health care
professionals that emphasizes proactive, individualized care planning and clear
communication between providers, patients and their families.
• At the community level, funding should be made available for support services,
including non-medical services, to assist individuals and families in accessing the kind
of care they want for the last days of their lives.

Good Stuff! And a significant step forward thanks to our fellow citizens...