Healthcare is a critical issue with patients, physicians and other stakeholders, as confirmed in a November 1999 Washington Post survey. Elderly Americans wont be able to afford the prescription drugs they need. Medical benefits that you and your family now receive will be reduced or eliminated. Health plans alone are not to blame for all the woes that have befallen the healthcare system. A number of stakeholders, including patients and doctors, have played supporting roles.
Physicians have difficulty in identifying best practices.
In turn, the marketplace does not provide a system to effectively capture or communicate best practices to physicians. Medical management programs have had difficulty keeping pace with changes in healthcare practices. Ineffective orientation programs have led to misunderstandings of how managed care systems work, resulting in expectation gaps. Unlike other industries, the managed care system has not yet been able to continuously identify problems, evaluate potential solutions and implement ongoing, lasting improvements across all aspects of healthcare service delivery. Indeed, lack of coordination and fragmentation of effort were a problem in healthcare delivery even before managed care came onto the scene.