In Montana, Integrated Care Clinic Reduces Costs

[Ptah]

Source: NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

At a clinic in Billings, Mont., doctors are employees rather than
contractors paid under a fee-for-service model. President Obama has
touted this kind of integrated system as a model to reduce costs
under health care reform. Health correspondent Betty Ann Bowser
visits the Billings Clinic and talks to doctors there about the
clinic's participation in a Medicare project to try to reduce costs
and improve health outcomes through better-coordinated care for chronically ill patients.



Read more: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/health/healthreform/

[John Q. Citizen]

1. Anything to keep the insurance companies leaching off us, is the plan I guess.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. We just finished watching that tonight!

It was outstanding, and I think it should be implemented everywhere.

They also interviewed Dr. Toby Cogswell at the Cleveland Clinic.

Similar programs are working well there.

K&R

[twitomy]

3. BINGO! DUers should watch this.

This Billings center is precisely what I have always felt should happen more. Integrated, which
cuts overhead, and Doctors as salaried employees, again which cuts overhead, and allows doctors
who want to be doctors first instead of a millionaire. I would love to see the govt grant charters and startup funding to create these organizations and have the patients be the owners, like a co-op.

I wish our politicians would think outside the box for once in their lives and do something like this. Instead I fear we are going to replace one monster, the insurance companies, with another and we wont save a dime.

[Stevepol]

4. Agreed! A public option is a good stop-gap measure, BUT

it's only stop-gap. As you say, the costs are still going to be very high. This Billings pattern is very similar to the way it's done in Sweden. This small clinic pattern where the doctors work for a salary and consult for almost every patient is the best way to bring costs down and provide the best care. The doctors would like it too I imagine.

[Wednesdays]

5. K&R

:kick: