The Path Forward for Academic Medical Centers: Innovation, Economics and Better Health

Transcript

MARK McCLELLAN:  The role of academic centers in healthcare reform is both critical and I think underappreciated at this point in what is a very complex, yet very important and unique opportunity for improving our healthcare system if we do it right.  This project is intended to help play a role in bringing ideas about a vision for the future of academic medical centers together with a vision for the future of our healthcare system. One: there is strong bipartisan support for a vision with much more affordable and available healthcare, higher quality, better organized care, greater efficiency in healthcare delivery, all very admirable goals, but all goals that have proved very difficult to achieve.

For this project, we hope to identify and develop some specific policy approaches, some specific supporting analysis to identify ways to address the challenges facing academic medical centers, especially those serving a disproportionate share of lower-income and uninsured patients that, at the same time, helps provide a better path forward for healthcare reform because, let’s face it, the academic institutions in this country, and not only the leaders in the nation, but the leaders in the world, of where our healthcare tends to go.

So, today, we’re going to lay out some foundations for this work. We’re going to review and assess the challenges facing academic medical centers in the 21^st Century and try to identify some promising directions forward. In doing so, we’re going to put a particular emphasis, as I said, on effective ways to care for vulnerable Americans, including innovative models for delivering quality care at a low cost and any needed reforms in payment and other regulations to go along with that. We’re also going to put a special emphasis on the role of academic medical centers in developing innovative approaches to care. That includes both innovative types of medical therapies and innovative ways of delivering these treatments. And then, obviously, academic medical centers play an essential role in medical education and training, another area where there’s a big gap between where we’d like to be and where we are.

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