Given the attention Mayo Clinic has received from President Obama and from the recent article in The New Yorker for its cost-effective care delivery, I took the opportunity yesterday to interview a member of Mayo Clinic’s health reform team, Raymond Gibbons, M.D. Dr. Gibbons is a national cardiology leader, having served as president of the American Heart Association. He discussed some of the localized Medicare spending disparities (e.g. Miami spending more than $16,000 per beneficiary, 65 percent more than neighborhing Fort Lauderdale) that must be addressed as part of health care reform, if the goal is to improve quality for all Americans:
Dr. Gibbons, as a cardiologist, went on to give one example from his field of how more treatments don’t always lead to better patient outcomes:
Dr. Gibbons highly recommends you visit the Dartmouth Atlas site to see the interactive map, which shows the spending per Medicare beneficiary in various local Medicare referral regions. Please note that high-cost areas are often immediately adjacent to lower-cost areas, within the same state. This suggests that patient populations and geography aren’t the real causes, but instead medical practice differences.
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[...] Dr. Ray Gibbons, a Mayo Clinic Cardiologist and former president of the American Heart Association, provides insight into why geographical spending disparities must be addressed in health care reform if quality is to [...]
[...] Mayo Clinic: Medicare Spending Disparities and Why More Spending Doesn’t Mean Better Care [...]