Four Features of Top Performing Healthcare Systems.
The 4 features that distinguish top-performing countries (Netherland, Norway, Australia, Switzerland, Sweden) from the United States when it comes to healthcare performance metrics, based on the think-tank analytical survey by The Commonwealth Foundation:
1) They provide universal coverage and remove cost barriers. Now, it does not have to be govt driven as half of America objects to a Canadian-style or UK-style healthcare model in the US. But there needs to be the removal of profit-hungry-venture-investors and executives who are making so much money in healthcare, that it's unaccountable. Unfair to have exploitation in healthcare. Healthcare should be a separate BUSINESS SERVICE INDUSTRY with strict profiteering limitations. Remove the functional regulations and implement what matters, excess profiteering.
2) This one is my favorite, as it's the low-hanging fruit in the USA healthcare industry.
They invest in primary care systems to ensure that high-value services are equitably available in all communities to all people. Primary care presence is directly correlated with longer lives in communities. And healthier as long as the focus is preventable.
3) They reduce administrative burdens that divert time, efforts, and spending from health improvement efforts; something that includes EMR documentation that clinicians do in order to satisfy billers and coders. Some of the chartings is for quality but mostly it's for billing appetite.
And #4) They invest in social services, especially for children and working-age adults. This is where care navigation and support services come in. An area in which most healthcare systems globally are slowly making strides.
Atif Zafar, MD is a physician, entrepreneur, and the author of the book "Why Doctors Need To Be Leaders". He is a physician leader with experience in both the US and Canadian healthcare systems.
As a leader in healthcare, he is interested in simplifying the business of healthcare for the customers (patients).