The following article was originally sourced from the news piece “Navigating Healthcare Under the ACA,” published on Kellogg’s News & Events page.
A handful of high level health care executives and figures spoke about the changing environment of that industry at the June 4 Kellogg School of Management’s MacEachern Symposium. Titled “The Future of the Physician,” the event was hosted by the Health Enterprise Management Program.
Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, the former special advisor for health policy to the White House and one of the architects of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA), explained how ten percent of the U.S. population consumes two-thirds of all health care dollars. According to Emanuel, American hospitals and physicians need to target this group to reduce costs and stay in business. He backed this claim by citing data about the approximately eight million Americans who recently shopped the public exchanges for health insurance.
“People are cheap and buying mainly on cost. This has very important implications for providers,” he said.
Keynote speaker Ardis Dee Hoven, MD, president of the American Medical Association (AMA) went on to explain that while many agree that the health system needs resuscitation, implementing the fixes hospitals and payers need is an entirely different and difficult undertaking—generating quality metrics and electronic record keeping come at a price and benefits will not increase overnight.
“Think of trying to turn around the Queen Mary with a row boat,” said Dee Hoven “You just simply cannot do it easily. It will take some time.”
The second half of the symposium featured two panel discussions with questions fielded from the audience. Practitioners and academics provided insight on the current shortage of primary care physicians in the United States in the first discussion, while David Meltzer, MD, of the University of Chicago, raised additional advancements in care in the second one.
