Here's one of the more intriguing ideas to come down the pike to introduce competition into health care (and you thought that was an oxymoron)!
The McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas will be holding its Innovation in Health Care Delivery Systems Symposium next week in Austin. In anticipation of the event, they have released a "teaser" highlighting some fascinating research that will be released at the symposium.
Two professors from UT, Andrew Whinston and Lizhen Xu, in collaboration with Jianqing Chen of the University of Calgary and Michael Yuan, CEO of Austin-based Ringful Health (http://www.ringfulhealth.com/about.html), have developed a new health care model that could revolutionize the way health care decisions are made - and the way treatment is delivered to patients - to the benefit of all (providers, insurers, the government, and most importantly, patients). Reverse auctions are at the core of their proposal, as patients would be able to have health care providers - in essence - engage in a reverse auction to "compete" to provide their care - based on both quality and cost outcomes. If implemented, such a consumer-driven system could work to put patients truly in charge of making their treatment decisions and introduce new, unprecedented levels of competition, transparency, and cost/quality focus into patient care.
So, reverse auctions could be the foundation for real health care reform. Kudos to these researchers for introducing an innovative, competition-based model into the health care debate - which will continue for many years to come. As the lead researcher, Professor Andrew Whinston, commented, “We already see changes in the wind for the U.S. health care ecosystem...The motivations to change are strong on all sides of the equation."
To read complete details on their research, read:
http://blogs.mccombs.utexas.edu/mccombs-today/2010/04/curing-patients-while-lowering-costs-a-matter-of-transparency-and-partnership/
David
From the Reverse Auction Research Center: http://reverseauctionresearch.blogspot.com/
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