American healthcare system

For too long, the American healthcare system has not been effective in delivering quality care to all Americans or in managing our healthcare dollars. The healthcare costs for our nation are ever-increasing and our system is the most expensive in the world, yet measures of medical quality indicate that we are not living longer, or healthier, or receiving the best care we can for the dollars we are spending. And one reason why is that the current fragmented, volume-based, system is not accountable to payers or consumers and is unsustainable.

The Affordable Care Act recognizes the need for care coordination and accountability. In order to assure accountability, health outcomes and performance measures are needed to assess whether or not payers and consumers are getting value for their healthcare dollar.

Changing the U.S. health care delivery system is no small task, but obviously a worthy one. The fact is that our current system is not providing better care for Americans even though we lead the world in healthcare spending. Our system is fragmented, providing care in silos where providers do not communicate well with one another.