it's what he wants to do for the entire health care system:
http://www.doctorsfordean.org/Healthy%20America%20Initiative_D4D_Website.docDr. Howard Dean’s
Healthy America Initiative
VISION
The Healthy America initiative is Governor Howard Dean’s comprehensive plan to reform American health care. Healthy America aims to refocus American health care on five principles: universal coverage, evidence-based medicine, prevention, patient-centered care, and affordability. Dr. Dean also is proposing five specific steps the federal government can take to improve care and contain costs as quickly as possible.
BACKGROUND
On June 5th, 2003, Governor Dean addressed health care leaders in Washington, DC to outline elements of his plan to improve the quality of care and control spiraling health care costs (For full text of this speech, go to: LINK). Dr. Dean emphasized that slowing the rapid rise of health care costs is critical to making affordable health insurance universally available. He further noted that the best strategy for controlling costs is making evidenced-based information available and allowing doctors and nurses the time to provide compassionate, effective and error-free care. Putting fact-based information in the hands of both patients and doctors enables sensible decisions, which lead to a more cost-effective health care system.
Unfortunately, today's health care system:
·Is wasteful and much more costly than it needs to be.
·Too frequently harms patients instead of helping them.
·Frustrates doctors and nurses who, while highly motivated to do the right thing, face too much paperwork, perverse incentives, constant pressure on their reimbursement rates, and not enough help in doing their jobs.
·Confuses and frustrates patients trying to navigate a fragmented system that is not designed around their needs or those of their families.
·Overwhelms patients and health professionals with vast quantities of information, much of which is designed to maximize sales of products and procedures, not to help inform choices.
·Rarely provides the help needed by patients to manage their own health – especially the 60% who suffer from a chronic condition (88% for those over 65).
·Ranks below that of most other industrialized nations despite what we spend on health care.
Governor Dean’s Healthy America initiative aims to create a lower-cost, higher-quality health care system. Among the key steps are controlling the runaway cost of prescription drugs, using information technology to reduce administrative costs imposed on hospitals and physicians, reducing avoidable medical errors (now costing between $70 and $100 billion per year), and ensuring that new technologies, including new drugs, get properly evaluated (financially as well as clinically) before they are widely used.