Shock the Patient

Health care system may need to feel some pain to change

If the American health care system is going to get better, “it may take a little crisis in order to drive the change,” Jonathan Woodson, Larz Anderson Professor in Management and professor of the practice, markets, public policy & law, said at a Questrom Dean’s Speaker Series event in fall 2016. Things, it seems, might have to get worse before they get better.

Woodson said that looking to the past will help determine what’s next. He explained that in the 1940s, companies persuaded workers to join them by offering benefits. “The cost for health care was relatively low, so it was a win-win.”

Since then, health care prices have soared and, he pointed out, our system doesn’t function as a unified force. “Realistically, what we have right now is not a system. It’s a series of micro systems all working for the same gain,” said Woodson, a vascular surgeon and former assistant secretary for health affairs for the US Department of Defense, who joined Questrom in fall 2016 and leads the new University-wide Institute for Health System Innovation & Policy.

“Realistically, what we have right now is not a system. It’s a series of micro systems all working for the same gain.”

Jonathan Woodson, Larz Anderson Professor in Management

For healthy populations, insurance companies need to share the risk and focus on prevention, he said. “The healthy choice needs to be the easy choice to make. We’ve got to get to a place where we have everybody insured.”

But how? American stakeholders need to “coalesce around solutions that benefit the patients, customers, employers, physician groups, and provider groups,” said Woodson. The policies and the processes need to be looked at very closely, too, because they “have to have better value.”

Save the date Check out future Dean’s Speaker Series events at bu.edu/questrom/calendar.