Jeff Korsmo, Executive Director of the Mayo Clinic Health Policy Center, will join representatives from AARP, Pfizer, the Minnesota Visiting Nurse Agency, the University of Minnesota, Crutchfield Dermatology, Virginia Piper Cancer Institute and Ucare to discuss the current environment for health care reform — why we need it and what could work. The panel will tackle Medicare, health plan scope of practice, business ethics, codes of conduct, transparency, reimbursement mechanisms, and more. The Minnesota Healthcare Roundtable will take place Friday, November 20, and is sponsored by Minnesota Physician Publishing.

If you are interested in submitting questions to the panel in advance, please post them here or follow the discussion live via Twitter on Friday — look for hashtag #MNMDreform. If you are a physician and a member of Ozmosis, you can join the discussion on the Ozmosis site.

Updated 11/23/09:

Here are video highlights from the roundtable:

As the House and Senate prepare to bring their final bills to their respective floors, Mayo Clinic would like to highlight the areas of agreement and divergence in the bills and our positions on health care reform.  We are encouraged by much—including provisions to pay for value in health care, an insurance exchange, individual mandate, subsidies for people to achieve coverage, and pilot projects on accountable care organizations and bundling of payments.

At this juncture, Mayo Clinic will neither endorse nor oppose entire bills in the House or Senate, but will continue to point out provisions that we think move the country toward patient-centered health care and areas where we have concerns. Read more.

Denis Cortese, M.D.,  president and CEO of Mayo Clinic, took time during a trip to New York yesterday to visit with reporter Reed Abelson at the New York Times. Abelson authors the “Prescriptions” blog at the Times.

During the conversation, Dr. Cortese had the opportunity to share the Mayo Clinic Health Policy Center view on how to best provide insurance for all Americans — an exchange-type organization similar to the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program (FEHBP) which currently offers insurance products to all federal employees including members of Congress.

Under this type of system, all Americans would be able to choose an insurance plan that best meets their needs, with the government providing sliding scale subsidies to those who can’t afford insurance. One of the benefits for patients is that this insurance would be portable — not dependent on an employer so people would be able to keep their insurance if they change jobs or lose their job.

Read the article.

And see the complete information about Mayo Clinic’s point of view on issues in health care reform including reforming the payment system to reward value.

We applaud the House and the Senate for their ongoing efforts to obtain universal coverage for all Americans and to reform the current insurance system through measures such as eliminating pre-existing condition exclusions.

Mayo Encouraged by Co-op Public Option

Mayo Clinic believes that the provision in Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus’ bill to foster the creation of consumer operated and oriented plans (CO-OP) is an encouraging step toward securing access to insurance to all Americans.

This option will give patients more opportunities for health care choice than a Medicare-like, price controlled plan. In addition, the Co-op plans, which will be member-run, nonprofit insurance companies, will be truly public plans because they will be owned and run by the consumers who use them.

Insurance reform that gives access to everyone

We recommend an individual mandate where individuals can purchase insurance in various ways: through employers, on the individual market, through exchanges, through co-operatives, or through a model like the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan (FEHBP).

In our plan, employers would be free to provide the insurance if they desire. People should be able to choose the coverage they want. Americans would own their own policies and their coverage would be portable. The role for government would be to help people afford the insurance through sliding scale subsidies as needed.

The FEHBP model, which utilizes an insurance exchange to make available multiple private plan choices—just like Members of Congress and all federal employees have—is the best “public plan” for enabling insurance for all.

If the “public plan” means a government-run, price-controlled, Medicare-like insurance model, we do not support it because it has been shown over many years that such a model has not controlled costs and has punished doctors, hospitals and others that provide high-quality, affordable care.

Mayo Clinic supports Senator Maria Cantwell’s (D-WA) amendment to incentivize value in the Medicare physician payment formula in the Senate Finance Committee health care reform bill.

Mayo Clinic and the Mayo Clinic Health Policy Center strongly support the need for Medicare to pay for value. Indeed, paying for value in healthcare is one of the four cornerstones for reform that emerged from our consensus driven health policy process. Value is defined as the equation of quality (outcomes, safety and patient satisfaction) over the cost of care over time.

We support provisions in the Senate Finance Committee bill that help move Medicare in this direction. We express thanks to Senators Klobuchar and Cantwell for their efforts to strengthen the provisions in the Chairman’s initial bill, and to Chairman Baucus for his leadership and support for moving Medicare toward a model that rewards value rather than volume.

Mayo Clinic believes that the provision in the Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus’ bill to foster the creation of consumer operated and oriented plans (CO-OP) is an encouraging step toward securing access to insurance to all Americans.

This option will give patients more opportunities for health care choice than a Medicare-like, price controlled plan. In addition, the Co-op plans, which will be member-run, nonprofit insurance companies, will be truly public plans because they will be owned and run by the consumers who use them.

Mayo Clinic applauds Senators Amy Klobuchar (MN), Maria Cantwell (WA) and 26 other Senators for urging President Obama to realign Medicare spending in order to provide greater value to patients and lower costs.

In a letter to the President, the bipartisan group focuses on the many benefits of instituting payment models in Medicare that would reward health care providers for the quality of care they deliver, not the quantity of services they provide.

In the letter, the 28 Senators, representing more than one quarter of the entire Senate, point out that “the current Medicare payment structure penalizes those who proivde efficient care, while rewarding those who order unnecessary tests and services. To incentivize more efficient health care practices, Medicare needs to incorporate a payment system that factors in the quality of care provided relative to its cost. This new payment methodology needs to reward providers who achieve good quality outcomes at a low cost. Such a change is critical to reining in costs and improving patient outcomes.”

Letter to the President

Mayo Clinic appreciates the hard work and dedication of Senator Baucus in moving the health care reform debate forward.

 Mayo is optimistic about the direction that Senator Baucus’s proposal lays out to ensure access to health insurance for all Americans. The proposed health insurance exchanges and a consumer owned and oriented plan will allow doctors and hospitals to continue to care for their patients, without the restraints of a Medicare-like, price-controlled public plan.

Mayo is pleased to see that the proposal includes elements designed to move Medicare in the direction of paying for value. Value is defined as the equation of quality (outcomes, safety and patient satisfaction) over the cost of care over time.

Provisions in the proposal that move us in this direction include the focus on Accountable Care Organizations, payment bundling pilot projects, and an Innovation Center for Medicare to test new patient-centered delivery and payment models.

Mayo will work with Senators to build upon these provisions and suggest additional ideas on paying for value in the Medicare program, including rewarding value and move toward implementation of programs that do so and using the array of measurement tools already in place to implement.

Mayo Clinic strongly supports President Obama’s call for health insurance reform and health care delivery reform, and agrees with the President’s position that the status quo is not acceptable. We believe that a bipartisan, collaborative approach is essential to achieving significant, patient-centered health care reform.

Mayo Clinic and the many organizations and individuals working with us in the Mayo Clinic Health Policy Center are strongly in favor of reform of both health care delivery and health insurance. True health care reform is getting better results for the money spent. Better results for money spent is what we meant by high value health care: better outcomes, safer care, better service and at lower costs over time. And this will translate to better access to medical services for all Americans.

We agree with President Obama’s focus on insuring all Americans and reforming the health care payment reform.

As the summer Congressional recess draws to a close, we wanted to take this opportunity to refocus and make clear Mayo Clinic’s perspectives on the current health care reform efforts, and offer specific ideas which we think will create significant patient-centered health care reform of improving access to high-quality, affordable health care.

Our Point of View lays out the path we believe health care reform needs to take and what needs to be accomplished to ensure high-quality, affordable, accessible health care for all. The Leadership Perspective is our current take on the health care reform issues of the day including paying for value, insuring everyone, Medicare reform, and the facts about end-of-life care.