Kent Bottles: ICSI Conference in May Just Might Help Fix Health Care Mess

“I just had a minor surgery last fall and was once again reminded about how stunningly dysfunctional the system is – especially for people like me with high deductibles who basically pay for their own health care. For a $4,000 procedure, I got 14 invoices from four different providers spread over a four-month time frame.  And no one in the system could give me any idea what the (very standard) procedure might cost – even though they offered a 20% discount if I paid within 48 hours.  Paid how much? To whom? I think Franz Kafka is still behind the curtain…”

The above quotation from an email to me from a smart and savvy business consultant epitomizes our “stunningly dysfunctional” health care system.  Why is health care so slow to adopt IT?  Why is quality so low?  Why is cost so high?  Why can’t anybody do anything about it? Why do we have to give our demographic data four times when we visit the doctor or hospital?

Twin Cities-based ICSI (http://www.icsi.org), a collaboration of physicians, not-for-profit health plans, employers, state government, hospitals, and others, has since 1993 been bucking the national trend.  Minnesota has benefited and leads the nation in many quality rankings.  However, even Minnesota is not delivering the kind of coordinated, high- quality, low-cost care we all deserve and need.

And now ICSI is hosting a conference (http://bit.ly/Ws7IE) targeted at doctors, administrators, nurses, health plan executives, policymakers, consultants and anyone else who wants to help co-create the health care system we need and want.  And it is obvious to anyone who is breathing and thinking and reading the papers that waiting for a federal solution to the problem is a non-starter.

The two keynote speeches reflect the three tracks that participants can choose from.  ePatientDave, who has been featured in the Boston Globe and Time Magazine, is a leader of the Participatory Medicine Movement.  Dave is a kidney cancer survivor and Personal Health Record (PHR) pioneer who just wants doctors and hospitals to “give me my damn data.”  Dr. David Shulkin, a perennial member of the 50 most powerful physician executive lists, has done it all:  Chief Medical Officer at Penn, founder and CEO of DoctorQuality, CEO of a hospital in New York, and quality guru.  Who better to explain how we really can and must decrease per-capita cost and increase quality?

This is not your usual conference.  Want to become a physician or nurse executive?  We’ve got a panel for that.  Want to learn how your hospital or medical practice should be using YouTube and Twitter?  We’ve got a lecture by Mayo Clinic social media guru Lee Aase for that and we’ve also got a panel with real life social media pioneers like Ben Heywood and Jen McCabe.  Are you confused by the new term Accountable Care Organization?  We’ve got a professor from Dartmouth and a CEO from http://www.nrhi.org who are the national leaders in this emerging field.

Are you confused about PHRs?  You better come and here the panel with hot shots from Mayo Clinic, Microsoft, Google, and Epic.  Not sure why cell phones are the killer app for health care in the future and why the current business model for the hospital and medical practice is obsolete and unsustainable?  We’ve got you covered. Are you wondering if evidence-based medicine and shared decision making just might be part of the solution?  You better come to the pre-conference half day seminar by HealthPartners and Mayo Clinic leaders in the emerging field.

I could on and on, but why don’t you just take a look at this link, which has the whole program: http://bit.ly/Ws7IE.  Or better yet ask me on twitter (@kentbottles) or email (Kent.Bottles@icsi.org) or call me on my cell phone (610-639-4956).  I hope to see you all in St. Paul May 3-5, 2010.  We need your help in co-creating a health care system that works as it is clear that Congress is totally incapable of getting anything done on this.