Goals for Health: A Redesigned Approach

According to the Institute of Medicine report Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century, the U.S. healthcare non system should strive to effect the following changes:

  • Redesign care processes
  • Make effective use of information technology (IT)
  • Improve knowledge and skills management
  • Develop effective teams
  • Coordinate care across patient condition, service, and settings
  • Use performance and outcome measurement for continuous quality improvement and accountability

Reforming health care is a ubiquitous topic in the national dialogue because of the amount of resources that "healthcare" expenditures consume—16%-20% of GDP. For all the ideas and opinions brought forth, however, all we seem to get is more GDP devoted to the problem, with partial solutions that get traction, then fizzle, doing little to improve quality or reduce the chaos in the non system. Then the blame game begins: Rising costs are the "fault" of providers, or of insurers, attorneys, pharmaceutical and product companies, patient demands and expectations, for-profit hospitals, or government inefficiencies.

It is time now for a true health renaissance, with constructive, holistic, integral, paradigm-launching thinking and deliberative action utilizing the current BESTs of art, science, craft, human and machine intelligence/interfaces, and spirituality and hierophany. I believe that, until we all re-vision the delivery non system, we cannot begin to correct the reimbursement mechanisms. It is time, and now, to retire the hospital and Flexnerian thinking that is stifling new growth and flourishment of bold and novel integral cognitions. 

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