Your Creative Brain: Seven Steps to Maximize Imagination, Productivity, and Innovation in Your Life by Shelley Carson

Author:Shelley Carson [Carson, Shelley]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Non-Fiction, Psychology, Cognitive Psychology
ISBN: 9781118396544
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
Published: 2012-09-19T00:00:00+00:00

Dr. Paul Ellwood, Thomas Scully, and Joe Kanter

In articulating such a vision, Dr. Ellwood stated, “The health system will continue to be out of control until we establish a permanent independent, quasi-governmental institution whose responsibility is to guide the behavior of the health system without directly participating in its operations.”151

Echoing my approach, Dr. Ellwood shared his strong belief that, “One possible model for this approach to healthcare reform is the Federal Reserve System.”152 Dr. Ellwood further stated:

Every facet of our health system—cost, quality, access and even our vaunted research enterprise—is falling dangerously below its potential. It’s time we rethink how we approach healthcare reform.

One significant problem is that our outmoded health system fails to routinely measure and analyze health outcomes and to apply the results in caring for patients. The Vioxx controversy, and other widely publicized clinical surprises like it—involving postmenopausal hormone therapy, antidepressants for children and the Atkins diet—are symptoms of that failure.

Paradoxically, medical inflation and uneven quality are the result of contemporary healthcare’s success treating chronic illnesses and prolonging life. This has been achieved largely with powerful drugs that are designed to influence critical biochemical processes. Most of us outwardly “healthy” seniors are mini- biochemistry laboratories testing and exceeding the limits of today’s health science. 153

While one might simply try to attribute some of these aforementioned failings to the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), or view them as the failure of other watchdogs, I view them more as failures attributable to the lack of rapid learning from experience that occurs in our present healthcare system—that is, we still fail to capture real-world data in a way that would enable us to more quickly identify, analyze, and prevent such safety issues.

Dr. Ellwood has stated that, “Progress has outstripped medicine’s historical way of doing business. Catching up is going to involve continuously measuring, managing and using clinical methods that are consistent with what we learn.”154

As previously mentioned, in order to remedy this problem, Ellwood advocates for us to learn from the Federal Reserve System, “which has demonstrated that a federal agency can achieve political independence and endurance while deploying powerful tools affecting the entire economy.” He further elaborated:

The health system needs a steward similar to the Fed. The new health oversight agency could be called the “HealthFed.” Joe Kanter, the sponsor of this conference and preeminent advocate of a National Health Outcomes Database, suggested the label “Federal Reserve System for Health,” with the catchy acronym FRESH [today, the Federal Health Board]. Take your choice.

The HealthFed approach does involve controversial fundamental changes in the information, clinical traditions and incentives driving the American health system, but it does not require a single-payer government takeover.

There is no institution in the United States with the responsibility to assure the integrity of the entire health delivery system. No one has the tools and durability to manipulate the health system’s performance or the clout to implement its goals. 155

This view represents a new way to think about health information. It lays the foundation for the governance structure that will yield the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that I envision.

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