Visionaries Provide a Path to Better Health Care
Geneva, December 17, 2019: The American International Club (AIC) hosted a panel on value-based health care for Geneva. The panel consisted of Mauro Poggia, Conseiller d’Etat in charge of security, employment and health care; and Rodolphe Eurin, CEO of La Tour Medical Group.
Mr. Poggia said that health-care needs to be focused on the patient and results, while eliminating costly duplication. He said that “we need the right treatment for the right patient at the right time”. He added that value-based health care should be offered to all, regardless of insurance coverage. Obstacles to value-based health care in Switzerland include lack of cooperation between health care providers, administrative inertia, and federal legal frameworks (e.g. tariff reform on how doctors charge for services). In response to a need for better operational data collection, the Swiss Romande region has instituted CARA (Connecté à ma santé), a patient electronic medical dossier, which is planned to be mandatory by 2021. Mr. Poggia stated the need for health care continuity from hospital to home. He lauded IMAD’s home health-care work, which takes care of 60,000 special-care individuals in Geneva on at least a weekly basis.
Mr. Poggia noted that socio-economic conditions & lifestyle (culture, physical training, economy, nutrition, avoiding bad habits like smoking, etc.) account for 40% to 50% of disease prevention and long, healthy lives. The other half comes from genetics (20% to 30%), environment (20%), and actual health care (only 10% to 15%). One of the key axes for his 2030 Health Care Vision was the well-being and quality of life of the elderly, which is already being addressed online via https://www.ge.ch/dossier/cogeria.
Mr. Eurin provided an insightful and strategic view on value-based health care. The core of La Tour is why it exists – which is to restore patients’ quality of life in the best way possible. The second step is how to measure these medical outcomes to ensure quality health care; calculated by health outcomes that matter to the patient in relation to the cost of delivering those outcomes. The third step is what infrastructure and services are provided. La Tour is well-known for its sports medicine, oncology and gynecology specializations among other areas. But the key to success in health care, or any field, is to know why your organization exists in the first place. Any hospital can offer infrastructure and services. But an organization driven by a mission to restore patients’ quality of life, with the right outcome data, can then provide the related optimal infrastructure and services to truly differentiate itself.
Mr. Eurin opined that often hospitals are there to serve doctors. In contrast, a better model is for a hospital to partner with doctors to serve patients. He stresses quality outcomes when assessing La Tour’s doctors, to achieve even better outcomes in the future. He extends this outcome analysis to medical device suppliers and smart therapeutic drug choices. Mr. Eurin emphasized the need for openness. For example, La Tour has been transparent with insurance companies in billing and documentation, thereby increasing trust and efficiency.
AIC President, Ed Schneider, closed-out the event by thanking the panelists, and presenting each of them with a lifetime AIC membership certificate and a bottle of champagne.