At a recent Senate roundtable discussion on health reform, Cleveland Clinic CEO Delos "Toby" Cosgrove said an integrated model is the key to the clinic’s success.
Cosgrove told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that an integrated system removes financial incentives from the decision making process and allows physicians to focus solely on practicing medicine. The committee last week began drafting health reform legislation.
Cosgrove was the lone hospital witness among the hearing's two dozen participants, which included representatives from business, the insurance industry, hospitals, academia, medical groups, organized labor and state government.
He said the clinic reduces costs by aligning the financial interests of the hospital and its physicians, allowing them to better deploy resources on patients' behalf. He said there is no profit motive for his doctors to order expensive or unnecessary procedures. "We are proud that we have removed the financial incentive from the decision making around medicine," he told the committee.
Much of the June 12 roundtable discussion centered on how health reform could promote wellness and prevention programs, and Cosgrove gave suggestions for how others can replicate his organization's success in tackling wellness initiatives. Noting that smoking, obesity and lack of exercise account for 40% of premature U.S. deaths, Cosgrove described the clinic's efforts to eliminate smoking on its campus, provide more nutritional meals to employees and patients and encourage employees to exercise.
In the first six months of the clinic's exercise program, "we lost 76,000 pounds as an organization," said Cosgrove, adding that "every pound that you are overweight amounts to essentially $50 per year in additional health care costs."
He said more organizations would implement similar programs if they realized the benefits of investing in these types of programs. A focus on wellness is a key element of AHA's Health for Life (www.healthforlifeamerica.net ) reform policy framework.
