Obama to Observe Green Bay's Healthcare Model

According to a recent Washington Post article, Green Bay, Wis. is one of the best cities in the country according to numerous measures. The city has "managed to control medical spending while steadily improving health outcomes."

Peter Orszag, the Obama administration's budget chief, said, "If we could make the rest of the nation practice medicine the way that Green Bay does, we would have higher quality and significantly lower costs."

In his drive to rein in skyrocketing health-care costs, Obama is increasingly focused on wasteful medical care that does not extend life and may actually be harmful. Today's town-hall-style meeting, his first as president to promote health reform, is intended to spotlight one city's strategy for squeezing out waste without hurting quality.

What Obama is likely to hear in Green Bay is testimony to the value of digital records, physician collaboration, preventive care and transparency, say those most involved in Wisconsin's innovative approach.

"There's been a fairly steady progression of quality" in areas such as diabetes care and cancer screening, said Chris Queram, executive director of the Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality, which publishes statewide performance measures....The federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality gives Wisconsin high scores on 100 measures, ranging from the treatment of heart disease to childhood asthma.

However, what's exciting the Obama administration the most? The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice have some very interesting findings.

The New Hampshire researchers have documented and mapped wide variations in the cost and types of care given to American seniors through the Medicare program, concluding that spending more on health care has not resulted in better health.

For example, the researchers found that In the final two years of a patient's life, Medicare spent an average of $46,412 per beneficiary nationwide, with the typical patient spending 19.6 days in the hospital, including 5.1 in the intensive-care unit. Green Bay patients cost $33,334 with 14.1 days in the hospital and just 2.1 days in the ICU, while in Miami and Los Angeles, the average cost of care exceeded $71,000, and total hospitalization was about 28 days with 12 in the ICU.

Are these differences attributed by big-city prices? According to the article, maybe. WP interviewed a Elliott Fisher, principal investigator for the Dartmouth Atlas Project, who said "but the differences that are really important are due to the differences in utilization rates." That is key, the "utilization rate". This is why the Obama administration is so interested in the study. If we are utilizing our resources at an optimal level, we are operating at an optimal level.

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