Conference Presentation, Fireside Chat, Panel
How Improved Health and Longer Lives Drive Global Prosperity (updated)
Milken InstituteThomas Frieden, Jonathan Gluck, Carole Roan Gresenz, Michael Harsh, Peter Margolis, Ceci Connolly, Mike Harsh
- Immunization is projected to save lives and generate a 3-to-1 return on direct medical costs and a 10-to-1 return on societal costs, contributing $70 billion annually to the economy.
- Accountable care models are expected to reduce costs and improve outcomes by prioritizing population health and preventive care, with further savings anticipated if these models expand via the Accountable Care Act and CMS initiatives.
- Telehealth pilots funded by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation are predicted to achieve broad adoption if successful, potentially preventing diabetes-related complications like amputation in low-income populations.
- Advanced medical imaging and the miniaturization of ultrasound technology are forecast to reduce the need for exploratory surgery and enable point-of-care diagnostics, respectively, squeezing billions in net savings from the system.
- Standardizing care within large physician networks is expected to significantly improve patient outcomes, including increasing remission rates from approximately 60% to 77% by 2019 for the Improved Care Now Network.
- Improving the probability of care delivery to 75% is expected to yield significantly better patient outcomes, including reduced time off work and enhanced quality of life.
- Prizes designed to crowdsource solutions are anticipated to foster new industries with a 10 to 20 times return on effort while incentivizing preventive care and solutions for specific health problems.
- Accurate prediction of hospital admissions could reduce unnecessary hospital care costing $40 billion annually by shifting care to physician offices, while eliminating clinical variation alone could drive $60 to $63 billion in annual savings per percentage point removed.
- Monthly data feedback for physicians is expected to rapidly improve performance in areas such as hypertension control and infection management, while leveraging data registries could enable clinical trial simulations for expensive biologics at costs in the thousands rather than millions.
- Interoperable health information systems are expected to reduce redundant care and realize significant cost savings by facilitating data sharing between hospitals and ambulatory care centers.
- Future healthcare innovations must demonstrate increased global access, improved patient outcomes, and affordability to succeed, as the market no longer guarantees adoption for unproven developments.
- Pharmaceutical companies producing "Me Too" medications may face negative consequences as the industry shifts toward comparative effectiveness, while smoke-free air laws are expected to continue scaling to cover the remaining U.S. population.
- Structural payment reform and new reimbursement strategies are anticipated to enable the widespread adoption of technology-driven home care, though the transition to paying for quality rather than quantity remains a primary political challenge.
- Universalization of health insurance through exchanges is expected to foster entrepreneurship by decoupling health coverage from employment, while low-tech innovations like checklists are projected to improve quality and employment at lower costs.
- Extended unemployment is expected to be increasingly recognized as a source of traumatic stress requiring medical treatment, and normalization of end-of-life discussions is predicted to shift medicine's perspective from treatment failure to care success.
- Progress in health IT is expected to improve patient safety and care quality despite facing learning curves and implementation delays, while increasing physical activity is anticipated to majorly impact mental health indicators.
- Making a healthy state the societal "default value" is expected to reduce health costs by preventing the need for care entirely, and an abundance of data is predicted to motivate innovation even amidst declining resources.