10 Ways to Cut Health-Care Costs Right now

The cover story in the November 2009 Business Week provides ten easy ways that we can cut healthcare costs without an act of congress. In short, the ten steps are:

1. Crack down on Fraud & Abuse
Insurers need to step up their efforts to catch the fraudsters - the people setting up companies to fraudulently bill for services not rendered.

2. Develop a Healthly Workforce
Companies need to provide financial incentives to reward employees who eat well and excercise or at a minimum make it easier for them to these things. Flexible hours or a shorter day could make it easier.

3. Coordinate Care thru Family Doctors
This is a little trickier because the industry is so fragmented, but things are changing with the use of more technology. Hospitals and other management companies are making it easier because they are starting to employ medical groups again.

4. Make Health a Community Effort
This is probably the hardest because it requires people to take responsibility for their own health. The need to eat vegetables and exercise is no secret, but for someone that has let themselves go it probably seems impossible. The article suggests walking 10,000 steps a day and eating 5 servings of vegatables. Sounds easy enough.

5. Stop Infections in Hospitals
Hospitals have come up with an easy plan to stop infections. They came up with a 5 step plan to reduce infections that requires all staff to wash their hands, clean patients' skin with strong antiseptic, wear masks, caps and gowns and take other percautions.

6. Get patients to take their Medications
Insurers can help make the medications more financially accessible by reducing co-pays for drugs needed to treat diabetes and heart disease. Pharmacists can monitor whether these patients are filling their perscriptions and then it's up to the patient to take them.

7. Discuss options near the end of life This is not about death pannels. This is about patients making decisions with their family so that they get the right care at the end of their life.

8. Use of Insurance to Manage Chronic Disease
This kind of ties into #6 in that it requires insurers to create plans specific to people with chronic conditions so that they are incentivized to do the things needed to be healthy.

9.Let well-informed patients decide
More is not always better. Informed Medical Decision Making, a non-profit educations patients about treatment options and outcomes so that they can make an informed decision.

10. Apologize to the patient
It's about healthcare providers owning your mistakes and telling patients if something goes wrong. Studies have shown that the Sorry Works!

What do you think? Are you implementing any of these strategies?