For those of you who know about the Innovation project I did at work last year, this is a lot of what we researched. These are the ideas that will actually reduce costs (hopefully after we’ve achieved coverage reform nationally, as we already have in Massachusetts). While they only briefly mention computers in the article, just as in any industry, predictable, better organized, more measurable care will in large part depend on IT.

The health care debate of 2009 has had so many moving parts that it has sometimes seemed impossible to follow. The crisis behind the debate, though, is about one thing above all: the scattershot nature of American medicine. The fee-for-service payment system — combined with our own instincts as patients — encourages ever more testing and treatments. We’re not sure which ones make a difference, but we keep on getting them, and costs keep rising. Millions of people cannot afford insurance as a result. Millions more have had their incomes pinched by rising insurance premiums. Medicare is on a long-term path to insolvency. The American health care system is vastly more expensive than any other country’s, but our results are not vastly better.

via Magazine Preview – If Health Care Is Going to Change, Dr. Brent James’s Ideas Will Change It – NYTimes.com.