Roosevelt Island Doctor Jack Resnick's Affordable Home Health Care Proposal Profiled in Today's NY Times

Link:

Last December 29, Roosevelt Island's Doctor Jack Resnick conducted one of the Obama Health Care Forums at the Good Shepherd Community Center in which he presented his plan for affordable home health care and showed the above video to illustrate the benefits of such a system from both a cost and patient care perspective. Today's NY Times column, titled The New Old Age - Why House Calls Save Money, profiled Dr. Resnick's ideas:

Dr. Jack Resnick, an internist in New York, believes that if the frail elderly are treated at home by doctors making house calls, as they did in the good old days, then medical outcomes will improve and Medicare costs can be reduced.

...Dr. Resnick’s own anecdotal experience with house calls has been documented in various medical journals, which report that keeping geriatric patients out of the hospital reduces costs between 30 and 60 percent. With Medicare cost-containment high on the agenda of the incoming administration,...

Almost all of the comments to the NY Times article were deservedly supportive and complimentary of Doctor Resnick but two in particular raised interesting points. The first by AS (#17):

Sounds good, but the bottom line is “Show me the data” until then this is just a heartwarming anecdote.

Prelim data => grant money => real data

I agree that paying people enough is going to be key. At the end of the day, we’re going to have to ration health care. If Bam is smart he’ll start funding the necessary research now. If the outcomes data support this then paying enough to make it financially viable should be a no brainer. My colleagues and I are going to undergo a huge cognitive shift if we as a society finally realize that we want good care more then sophisticated care and align the financial incentives accordingly.

BTW: For anyone with means there’s a way to get a true medical home and possibly house calls right now. It’s called concierge medicine.

Followed by JimJaf (#18):

This all makes sense. So why doesn’t this guy and a bunch of colleagues get together with an insurer and start a medicare advantage program, which pays better than 100% of the average medicare reimbursement. Insofar as their costs will be less than 70% of this norm, they’ll then be able to split the remaining 30% as profit. Seems like a win-win situation.

I am glad that Doctor Resnick has been able to get his message out to the public beyond Roosevelt Island and hope that President-Elect Barack Obama's Health Care Transition Team is paying attention.

YES WE CAN!