The New York Times has a great little piece on what the Eskimos have done to dramatically improve health care while controlling costs.  There are no doubt some good lessons here we should consider when discussing how to improve our broken, expensive health care system.

¶Assigning small teams — consisting of a doctor, a nurse, and various medical, behavioral and administrative assistants — to be responsible for groups of 1,400 or so patients. The team members sit in the same small work area and communicate easily. When a patient calls, the nurse decides whether a face-to-face visit with a doctor or other health care provider is required or whether counseling by phone is sufficient. The doctors are left free to deal with only the most complicated cases. They have no private offices and the nurses have no nursing stations to which they can retreat.

¶Integrating a wide range of data to measure medical and financial performance. Southcentral’s “data mall” coughs up easily understood graphics showing how well doctors and the teams they lead are doing to improve health outcomes and cut costs compared with their colleagues, their past performance and national benchmarks, and it provides them with action lists of what they can do to improve and mentors to guide them. That almost always spurs the laggards. One doctor whose team ranked well behind 10 others in scheduling annual eye exams for diabetics jumped to first place within two months once she became aware of how poorly her team was performing.

¶Focusing on the needs and convenience of the patients rather than of the institution or the providers. The facilities feature rooms where providers and families can chat as equals on comfortable chairs, in sharp contrast to examination rooms where a doctor looms over a patient. Every patient visit is carefully planned so the patient can get in and out quickly without being delayed because, say, a needed lab test result is not available.

¶Building trust and long-term relationships between the patients and providers.

¶Changing from a reactive system in which a sick patient seeks medical care to a proactive system that reaches out to patients through special events, written and broadcast communications, and telephone calls to keep them healthy or at least out of the hospital and clinics.

Beezer here.  Of course these ideas come out of a culture that is different than that prevalent in the nation’s health care system.   Nationally, our system is based on a fee for service approach that encourages waste and drives up costs overall, while providing lousy actual health care.  But hey, it delivers beaucoup profits for all the players, and that’s what we’re all about.