In many ways, it is the best of times for those amongst us who are interested in transforming American health care. For the first time, there is broad recognition of our deep quality problems and the long road ahead to improve on them. The question is no longer whether we should expand access, but how. We have moved on from documenting healthcare disparities-to beginning to work to close them. For the first time, we have health information technology and payment instruments with the ability to support system transformation. Whatever we think about the current state of electronic health record systems, the HITECH Act's meaningful use provisions give us a federal health IT infrastructure where there was none. On the payments side, the Affordable Care Act created a Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation with real power to transform how we pay for clinical care in this country. The combination of health IT and new payment models is rocket fuel for the healthcare change-makers among us.
展开▼
