Connections - Best Care at Lower Cost: The Path to Continuously Learning Health Care in America
Missed opportunities to improve the U.S. healthcare system resulted in an estimated seventy-five thousand needless deaths in 2005, while inefficiencies cost $750 billion in unnecessary health spending in 2009, a report from the
Institute of Medicine
finds. Best Care at Lower Cost: The Path to Continuously Learning Health Care in America (450 pages, PDF) offers recommendations for transitioning the healthcare system from one plagued by errors and inefficiencies to one that learns — in real time and with new tools — how to better manage problems. Funded by the Charina Endowment Fund and the
Robert Wood Johnson
and Blue Shield of California foundations, the report calls for improvements in the system's data infrastructure and ability to improve care and outcomes; clarifying research regulations and enhancing knowledge management systems; and adopting outcome- and value-oriented payment models, contracting policies, and benefit designs that reward high-quality team-based care focused on patients' needs.
