From the HARRISBURG PATRIOT-NEWS Opinion:
The Patient Centered Medical Home is a simple idea — a patient has a relationship with a primary care physician who looks after his or her overall health.
…We have the world’s most expensive health care. Health care now takes up roughly 16 percent of the gross domestic product. At present rates of annual increase, it will approach 25 percent in the not-too-distant future. With a per capita spend of almost $6,000 (our nearest competitor, Switzerland, spends just under $4,000), the total annual cost of U.S. health care now stands at a whopping $2 trillion, despite the fact that major gaps in access and affordability continue to exist…
Universal agreement across the political, health care and economic spectrum says that growth in that cost must be curbed. Linking the problems of cost and quality, the Patient Centered Medical Home concept comes in. It reverses the existing system where providers are reimbursed as a reward for treating sick patients rather than rewarding them for keeping patients healthy…
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