Goldman Exec: Economy is Growing, but…

By Cyndy Nayer, CEO, Center of Health Engagement, June 18, 2014

Goldman's top economist, Jan Hatzius, believes that the US economy is now growing at an above-trend pace. This is great news regarding economics and income security. For most.

But Hatzius calls out the high student debt and overall slow pace of job creation as a hindrance to the recovery and expansion of the marketplace.  

And there is still the issue of those without health care coverage or those with income insecurity--making less than the cost of living, managing multiple jobs, or at risk of losing their pensions.  

A video was recently published on the relationship of poverty to readmissions, featuring the Detroit Henry Ford health system. When there is low income, lack of access to pharmacies and healthy food, and poor public transportation, patients discharged from hospitals are often readmitted due to poor compliance in follow-up recommendations. They skip drugs, they eat poorly and they miss regularly scheduled physician checkups. Many are readmitted to emergency rooms and inpatient stays.

This, then, becomes not only a patient risk (for both increased costs and poorer outcomes) but also a health system risk (since CMS is penalizing health systems for avoidable readmissions). Costs go up for the patient (copays, deductibles, new prescriptions, more outpatient visits). Costs go up for payers (avoidable medical and drug costs, among others; absence management if the payer is the self-insured employer). Costs go up for the community (unreimbursed medical costs go up, tax dollars are used for some of these and needed infrastructure, education, and job creation are left behind).

A new study from Mannatt and Commonwealth Fund clearly lays out the advantages of clinicians helping patients to get the community services needed to overcome these inequities.

"Before physicians can substantially cut costs and improve outcomes, they must first address patients' social needs, including whether a patient has a home or heat or access to healthy food, according to findings from a new report," says the report.

This is another opportunity for value-based reimbursements to those entities that can coordinate care beyond clinical intervention. The study calls for patient-centered medical homes (PCMH) to onboard these tasks.  

But ACOs, public health and even business entities can become allies in this effort to identify resources to improve access to healthy food, needed pharmaceuticals, expanded consumer debt counseling and educational resources.

Using value-based reimbursement strategies, payers, health systems and public entities could benefit by providing clear increases to those clinical practices that use care coordination and document better health and health cost outcomes.

Sometimes, health is achieved through non-clinical, social determinants (influences) that are improved by using the trusted resources in a patient's life. The physician, nurse, and pharmacist are 3 of the most influential.