Thursday, May 10, 2007

First Sensible thing I have read on fixing healthcare in a long time!

Andy Grove (formerly of Intel) has a good starting point! Wired reports:

Grove breaks the problem of health care into three manageable chunks. Two have technological solutions -- but not complex tech. Grove wants to keep the technology as simple as possible, a surprising idea for a man who put millions of transistors on a chip.

First: Keep elderly people at home as long as possible (an idea he calls "shift left"). Use high-tech gadgets to help them remember to take their medicine and monitor their health. In one year, if a quarter of the people now living in nursing homes went home, it would save more than $12 billion, Grove says.

Second, Grove advocates addressing the uninsured by building more "retail clinics" -- basic health care centers in drugstores and other outlets that can take care of problems that are presently, and expensively, addressed in emergency rooms.

Lastly, unify medical records using the internet. In his vision, every patient carries a USB drive containing his or her medical records, which any doctor can download.



Grove also discusses why he does not support universal healthcare. He makes good points, but ends with:

Altogether I'm obsessed with doability as compared to desirability.


My take:

Pragmatic and practical. Steps we can take now that will save money without a massive overhaul of the entire system that will take decades for a return-on-investment. AND, these steps don't block other solutions; they make future reform easier!

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