By way of once again attempting to get back on "participatory web" topic, I'd like to capture a few more "semi-idle thoughts" on participatory healthcare (a.k.a., healthcare consumerism). More specifically, this post focuses upon the most participatory (albeit electronically lagging) web of all: public policy.
Yesterday my friend Ed Lovern added a post to his always-illuminating BLOG suggesting that, perhaps, a little more "free market-based" [healthcare activity] may be just what the doctor ordered (pardon the pun). My first reaction was a benevolent...DUH? Without lapsing back into partisan political positions, I and many others beleive that too much public policy almost always stifles productivity and the general well-being. In fairness, however, we must also acknowledge that too little public oversight (e.g., regulation) can be just as damaging. For example, it can be argued that we're still having trouble striking the right balance in regulating the Financial Services industry: too little of it undeniably led to the banking meltdown, but too much reintroduced in repsonse arguably threatens to inhibit recovery?
The chart above illustratively depicts other extremes as well as more balanced situations. And, without further adieu here, I'll cut to the chase and assert that heathcare is dangerously over-exposed to public policy already! Unless we want to see our health future in the same toilet bowl that public education can be too easily seen, we'll embrace ideas like concierge medicine, CDHP, P4/PCMH and other healthcare consumerism paradigms with both arms. Yes, even that road will be bumpy; but, unlike public/national health plans, it's not palpably headed off a cliff!
Indeed, why can't we apply some of the consumerism "megatrendes" that Ron Bachman and others admonish us to consider (e.g., individuals, in industry after industry, have productively demanded more direct control over how they consume product/services)? On an even larger scale, why isn't someone considering strategic scenarios that project healthcare industry evolution on a trajectory followed by so many others before it (e.g., as industries become detached from adequate market force [think natural monopolies] regulation appropriately steps in; conversely too much regulation tends to insulate that same industry from the efficiencies naturally brought by market pressure (think municipal utilities]).
Here's but one example of the kind of strategic scenario "discovery" that might be found in a more rigorous retrospective/futures-driven look at healthcare consumerism.
For some years now, progressive electric utility companies have struggled with the apparent conflict of interest brought about by an energy conservation imperative. Inasmuch as some of them have now found new business models wherein energy suppliers can, in fact, make money by stemming demand (a.k.a., selling energy efficiency), why can't progressive healthcare systems find new business models (call them market-driven ACO's) wherein wellness become a profit center?
tbc...
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