Denis Cortese, M.D., Mayo Clinic CEO, opened the session with a quote from William J. Mayo, M.D., one of Mayo Clinic’s founders:
The best interest of the patient is the only interest to be considered, and in order that the sick may have the benefit of advancing knowledge, union of forces is necessary.
He said that’s the concept behind Mayo Clinic’s Health Policy Center and this symposium: bringing people from diverse backgrounds together to focus on the needs of the patient. He introduced four cornerstones of health reform that have been developed through the Mayo Clinic HPC’s work over the last two years:
- Insurance for all: FEHBP model
- Coordinated Care
- Value
- Payment Reform
In the morning sessions we will get into these elements individually.
Dr. Cortese outlined components of a Health Care System that would truly be a “system”
- A Learning Organization
- Value – measureable outcome, safety and service divided by the cost of providing care over time, not the line-item cost.
- Integration and Coordinated Care
- Individualized Medicine
- Science of Health Care Delivery – System engineering for health care. Dr. Cortese told the story of Mr. Cutter, who redesigned his mosquito spray to improve the delivery system, cutting the costs while reducing the toxicity. The active ingredient was just fine; the problem had been the delivery system. Everyone else was doing research on new active ingredients, but by changing the delivery system to a water-based solution he cleaned up. Likewise, Dr. Cortese says, the most toxic part of the health care “system” is the delivery system, yet the U.S. spends orders of magnitude more on new “active ingredients” than it does on creating a true system for delivering the care.
Here’s a quote from Dr. Cortese that sums up the perspective that everyone participating in this symposium and this long-term discussion needs to have:
Hospitals are not the center of the universe in health care. Patients are.
Check out the video that opened the session here.
Update: Click here for the audio file of Dr. Cortese’s opening remarks.
