Practice Variations And Health Care Reform: Connecting The Dots

Key Points

• The aim is to identify and address unwarranted variations in U.S. health care practices and improve patient outcomes.
• Review of existing literature on health care variations and remedies for improvement.
• Analysis of Medicare reform legislation as a potential framework for a demonstration project.
• Exploration of cultural biases in health care delivery and decision making.
• Identified key obstacles to adopting remedies for variations, including economic disincentives and a lack of focus on patient decision making.
• Highlighted the need for a quality agenda that prioritizes exemplary practices and clinical science.
• Proposed that Medicare reform could facilitate necessary changes in health care delivery.

Abstract