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++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ HEALTH CARE REFORM
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Community Responsibility in Health Care
Medicine: A New Era of T
Population-Based By Pat Riley, COO, KGBTexas Healthcare Solutions
HERE IS MUCH speculation and anticipation regarding the pending late June Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable
Care Act (ACA). For three days in March, lawyers for the Obama administra- tion and 26 states opposing the ACA presented compelling arguments to a sometimes testy audience of attentive justices. Much is at stake for our nation's health care delivery system, the 46 mil- lion Americans without health insurance, and the providers and hospitals that administer care. Some fear health care reform will
be shelved again should the Supreme Court strike down the law signed into effect by President Barack Obama in March 2010. If some statutes are found unconstitutional, the law in its entirety could be struck down. Regardless of what Chief Justice John
Roberts reveals in the opinion he is expected to write, health care reform is here to stay, and it is changing the landscape of how we look at patient care. How? Look at the adaptation of the "triple aim" concept Don Berwick introduced as President Obama's administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Before joining the administration,
Berwick and his colleagues at The Institute for Healthcare Improvement espoused the idea that new health care delivery designs can and must be devel- oped to simultaneously accomplish three critical objectives, or the "triple aim": + improve the health of the population
+ enhance the patient experience, including quality, access and reliability of care
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