1% Improvement = $77B Less in Health Costs
Saturday, March 7th, 2009
As we work our way through healthcare reform, innovative designs that help people with chronic conditions change their behaviors (learn self care techniques) are absolutely essential. This point is made forcefully in a short review of the George Halvorson’s book, Healthcare Reform Now! on the Influencer Blog:
“Halvorson’s book targets five common chronic conditions—asthma, congestive heart failure, coronary artery disease, depression, and diabetes. Together, these five conditions account for 75 percent of our healthcare spending. We would save $77 billion if we could successfully treat even 1 percent of the people with these chronic conditions. And the key to treatment is influencing behavior.”
In my course of cognitive design we reverse engineer some of the most successful chronic disease management programs to see what makes them tick.
