There will need to be substantial improvements in health care data. We need better outcomes measures and must be able to link patient-level medical records across providers. Providers must accept that quality varies and must actively engage in quality measurement. Quality measurement is imperfect and unfair to many providers, but providers should rally behind the quality movement because patients stand to benefit. Patients must become consumers, willing to shop around for the best managed care plans and the best providers.
Patients have much to gain by doing so, perhaps their very lives.
It seems to me that these are all necessary conditions for managed care to be successful. If even one hurdle remains standing, patients will fail to realize the full potential of a truly competitive health economy. While this seems like a lot to overcome, I remain cautiously optimistic. Despite ongoing merger activity on both the provider and the buyer sides of the market, most urban health care markets remain competitive, and antitrust agencies continue to fight against blatantly anticompetitive combinations. There are massive public and private sector efforts to create sophisticated health care data systems.