Costs of Care seeks to improve patient affordability. This will require many systemic changes. We all have a role to play. Our team has started the conversation by developing “key components for health care systems to address patient affordability”.
Submissions now open for the Costs of Care Affordability Award and the Student Value Challenge.
Our Leadership Summit provides training for first-year medical students to lead value improvement initiatives at their own medical schools – addressing the need to incorporate high-value care and health systems science into medical training.
Listen as Drs. Michael Williams and Scott Heysell from the University of Virginia Health System discuss their experiences with patient healthcare affordability, the complexities of billing and collections in our country, and how they have led discussions on improving the University of Virginia processes.
MoreOver the past 10 years, Costs of Care has helped lead the value improvement movement through a number of overlapping phases, from raising awareness and advocating for transparency, to addressing appropriateness by supporting clinician-led efforts to reduce waste and low-value care. There is still much work to be done on each of these fronts and as an organization we will continue to be meaningfully engaged in advocacy, awareness, appropriateness, and education. However, while each of these foundational components are necessary, they are insufficient for making the impact we want to see on patients’ financial and physical experience of health care. To truly provide greater value for diverse populations, we must meaningfully address patient affordability....
Read MoreCosts of Care believes that every person should be able to receive needed healthcare without payment concerns. It is in the best interest of our patients and society that we remove potential barriers to seeking testing and care. We applaud the recent announcements that major insurance companies will ensure coronavirus testing is provided free-of-charge to patients. Crises such as COVID-19 highlight the extreme vulnerabilities in our healthcare system, including how risky high out-of-pocket costs can be for patients on a routine basis.
In the U.S., patients often appropriately worry about receiving bills for unexpectedly large amounts following routine healthcare services.
As Dr. Aaron Carroll explains in yesterday’s New York Times, cost-sharing is not only potentially dangerous in this current situation with coronavirus, but it also exposes the underlying problems with this mechanism for everyday Americans making everyday medical decisions with their physicians and healthcare providers.
Americans should be able to trust that when we need it the most, our healthcare will be accessible and affordable. Nobody should be forced to choose between their life and their life-savings.
Read more about Costs of Care Affordability Moonshot:
Working together we can improve the safety, affordability and experience of healthcare.
‘a world in which no one has to choose between their life and their life savings’.
Help us create this world.
#CoCmoonshot #lifeoverlifesavings