Report From The Roosevelt Island Obama Health Care Forum - Prioritize Affordable Home Health Care Instead of Hospitalization and Nursing Homes

Roosevelt Island Obama Health Care Forum at the Good Shepherd Community Center

Tom Daschle attended one of last night's Obama Health Care Forums designed to help develop fresh new ideas for improving America's health care system in Dublin Indiana and not the one held last night here on Roosevelt Island. According to the NY Times:

Former Senator Tom Daschle, whom President-elect Barack Obama has called the “lead architect” of the new administration’s efforts to expand health insurance and rein in medical costs, attended a community meeting Monday where he got an earful about expenses that were too high and coverage that was too little....

Had Mr. Daschle attended last night's Roosevelt Island Obama Health Care Forum conducted by Doctor Jack Resnick (one of the rare NYC doctors who still makes neighborhood house calls) he would have seen an extremely informative and well attended meeting that focused primarily on providing affordable home health care as an alternative to hospital and nursing home care for elderly and disabled persons. Dr. Resnick's presentation can be summarized from the video below and his web site, The Roosevelt Doctor.

Independence at Home:
Saving Lives and Resources Through Health Care in the Home

Our health care system is broken. It costs too much and provides low quality care.

It's not enough to fix the financing of the system. We need to make health care better, safer, and more cost-effective.

By moving care out of hospitals and nursing facilities and into the
home, we can improve the quality of care by

• eliminating hospital-acquired infections
• reducing hospital errors
• providing personalized care from one doctor, not a faceless rotation of specialists
  

What do we need to make home care work?

• Physicians with:
  -24/7 availability
  -Intimate, comprehensive knowledge of the patient
  -Immediate access to the patient's database
• Home Health Aides
  -competent, well-paid
  -multi-functional
  -long-term
  
• Exercise/Physical Therapy -- continuous
  
• Providing hospital services at home, such as IVs
  
• Early Family/Caregiver Care Planning
  
• Live Audio/Video connection between doctors and patients

How will the system pay for it? It's cheaper.

• Hospitalization is the largest portion of healthcare cost
• Insurers could easily pay for all of the above services and still save money
• States are going broke paying for nursing home care through Medicaid
  -- we can save money by moving these patients into their own homes

Link:

CBS News reports that:

Through its Web site, the Obama transition team invited Americans to host health-care forums over the holidays. It provided "kits" that included a sample agenda, tips for a moderator and a plea for "particularly poignant stories to illustrate the need for health care reform."

A videographer documented Daschle's trip -- complete with footage of him walking through Indianapolis International Airport -- to post on the transition Web site. Other groups were encouraged to send photos, videos and reports.

I think Dr. Resnick and Roosevelt Island have plenty of "poignant stories to illustrate the need for health care reform" and hope that the Obama Health Care Transition team pays attention.