Medical and insurance experts acknowledged March 19 at the Siegal facility that the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, has created some uncertainty among the general populace. However, the four panelists predicted better health care will grow from the legislation over the next several years.
“The ACA has driven a lot of innovation,” said Dr. Eric Bieber, president of University Hospitals Accountable Care Organization. “You can love it. You can hate it. I’m agnostic to it…I think it has forced us to be innovative.” Patients will need to be “smart participants,” he said. “We’re on a path that’s changed forever…It will never be the same and it shouldn’t be. We need to get better.”
Bieber and the other participants – Dr. Akram Boutros, president and chief executive officer of The Metro Health System; Martin Hauser, CEO of SummaCare insurance; and Dr. David Longworth, chairman of the Medicine Institute at Cleveland Clinic – said ACA is a catalyst for positive change in several ways:
• The medical community now has the incentive to work together to raise the quality of care at a lower cost.
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• Patients with chronic diseases and high risk medical conditions are already experiencing better care at lower premiums.
• Medical providers are being held more accountable.
• Consumers will have the tools to make better choices for their medical care.
The panel, moderated by Emmy-winning communications professional Eileen Korey, also pointed out that improvement will occur over time. Looking back, they reflected on how ACA improves on managed care.
“When we tried managed care the first time, I believe the reason it failed was because there weren’t the right incentives,” Hauser said. “We didn’t have the data informatics and we allowed the insurance companies to take the lead. The difference now is that we’re letting doctors and hospitals through accountable care organizations …take the lead, and the insurance companies are doing what they should be doing, which is supporting the transformation of health care instead of leading it.”
Managed care was “a business driven model for curtailing care,” Boutros said. “It was not a clinical innovation or fundamentally designed program to provide better outcomes.” He said physicians previously worked as “lone rangers” by themselves. “We have significantly transformed that.” Under ACA, providers are working together to achieve better outcomes at lower cost with higher patient satisfaction, he said.
“We are in the midst of fundamentally transforming our care delivery model to make value – improving quality and lowering cost – at the core of what we do,” Longworth said. “We are at the beginning of this journey. The people right now who are most apt… to feel a difference are people who have chronic diseases, people who are in and out of hospitals… These young, healthy 25-year-olds probably have not seen a whole lot of difference.” Over time, they will because of a new emphasis on well care, he said.
Korey started the discussion by asking panelists to look beyond the headlines and provide insight on ACA’s impact on day-to-day delivery of health care. A former medical journalist, Korey is associate vice president and chief communications officer at the University of Akron. She is a member of the Cleveland Jewish News Board of Directors.
In their discussion, panelists cautioned the audience to avoid listening to lawmakers who are using ACA for political gain. They emphasized their view that ACA will ultimately provide a better health care system, but it will take time.
The forum was part of a public policy lecture series sponsored by the Cleveland Jewish News Foundation, the Laura & Alvin Siegal Lifelong Learning Program at Case Western Reserve University and Teaching Cleveland Digital.
Holly Wang, a resident of Shaker Heights, said she found the panel discussion encouraging. “I was glad to hear from the whole industry that this is the law, so they’re leading the way in this fundamental paradigm shift to looking at patient outcomes and quality and well care.” She said the lecture showed the interconnectedness of the insurance, medical industry and patients who are being asked to be more active in their own care and demand quality. “We keep hearing members of Congress wanting to repeal it. We should listen to the people in the business “who are embracing it and moving forward.”
Date: March 25, 2014