The Triple Aim: Care, Health, and Cost Writing Assignment

Paper 1
Name
Institution
Date
To Mr. Donald Berwick,
In response to your letter regarding the Triple Aim: Care, Health, and Cost, it is a fact that the US Healthcare system requires a synchronized approach. It is a fact that an integrated system plays a crucial role, it promotes partnership among individual and families, facilitates, better population health management and financial management. An integrated system can help redesign the primary care and further integrate other macro systems (Berwick, Nolan & Whittington, 2008) (Berwick, Nolan & Whittington, 2008).
The overall scorecard of 66 percent performance awarded by the Commonwealth Fund Commission on High-Performance Health System means certain barriers need to be addressed. The US healthcare expenditure is higher than any other developed country, yet the result is not pleasing. The Triple Aim needs to be interdependent because changes in any one goal affect the other two (Berwick, Nolan & Whittington, 2008).
In pursuing Triple Aim, policy constraints like the decision on how much to be spent on health care and the type of coverage to be given to who are some of the policy barriers that need to be addressed.
Hospitals seem to be protecting profits and increasing revenues, but not supporting efficient systems meant to reduce revenue or admission rates (Berwick, Nolan & Whittington, 2008). It is the fact that certain barriers to realizing an integrated care system are not technical, it's political.
I acknowledge that it will take years to achieve the Triple Aim due to several obstacles, including new technologies that have not had a significant impact on patient outcomes. Despite facing many barriers, there is hope that the fragmented health system can be integrated to offer better care services. Although measuring per capita cost is still one of the challenges, there need to capture relevant expenditure and index based on the local market circumstances to measure the actual cost of care. (Berwick, Nolan & Whittington, 2008).
Measuring population requires more of sampling or registration, which hence the need to use electronic health records system. However, certain innovators have stepped up to address some of these challenges facing the healthcare market (Berwick, Nolan & Whittington, 2008). Some innovative practices are in line with the triple aim. The use of a system-wide measure that relates to the triple aim is close to improving care services. A comprehensive metric would require tracking patient experiences within ambulatory settings; analyze patient levels of engagement and review continuity of care and clinical preventive practices (Berwick, Nolan & Whittington, 2008).
I believe that the healthcare system in the US is in the right direction, but there is need to craft an effective integrator to link healthcare organization to respond to patient care needs and preference at the same time consider the total cost of care. A good integrator needs to be a single organization that embraces a coordinative approach among healthcare stakeholders (Berwick, Nolan & Whittington, 2008).
The Kaiser Permanente is an example of such system which tries to integrate the financing with the delivery structure using these structures to good advantage. An effective integrator is a system that promotes a culture of transparency, systemic education, better communication and shared decision making not only among patients, but also the communities instead of limiting access to care, shifting cost and putting a more administrative barrier to care (Berwick, Nolan & Whittington, 2008).
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