Editorials

<< Previous   of   Next >>   ADVERTISEMENT   HAVE YOUR SAY Feel strongly about something? Share it with the community by writing a letter to the editor. You’ll need to include your name, address and daytime phone number. (We’ll only publish your name and hometown.) We reserve the right to edit letters, but if you keep yours to 250 words or less, we won’t ask you to shorten it. If your letter is published, please wait 30 days before submitting another. Send it to: E-mail: letters@heraldnet.com Mail: Letters section The Herald P.O. Box 930 Everett, WA 98206 Fax: 425-339-3458 Have a question about letters? Contact Carol MacPherson (cmacpherson@heraldnet.com or 425-339-3472).   Published: Wednesday, July 22, 2009 HEALTH CARE REFORM Our region offers solutions If health care reform doesn’t get a handle on spiraling costs, it will fail. Medicare and Medicaid are already racing toward insolvency, and if costs aren’t curbed, adding more subsidized care to the government’s tab will only hasten a fiscal catastrophe. Now some good news: Such strides are well under way locally, and the rest of the nation is taking notice. That’s why three local health-care leaders were invited to Washington, D.C., this week to explain how they’ve achieved envious results in keeping costs down and quality up. Dave Brooks, CEO of Providence Regional Medical Center Everett, Dr. Harold Dash, board president of The Everett Clinic, and Rich Maturi, senior vice president of Premera Blue Cross, shared what they’re doing right at a symposium called “How Do They Do That? Low-Cost, High-Quality Health Care in America.” Health-care leaders from 10 high-performing regional health systems were chosen to appear at the symposium, jointly hosted by a distinguished group of health organizations and think tanks. The idea was to examine the factors — culture, finance, delivery structures, etc. — that enable certain communities to provide low-cost, high-quality care. One of the event’s moderators was Dr. Atul Gawande, a surgeon whose recent article in The New Yorker described why the town of McAllen, Texas, had the nation’s highest Medicare costs without ranking high in quality of care. (McAllen spends more than twice the per-patient Medicare average of Everett, which ranks higher in quality measurements.) Gawande’s conclusion: Patients in McAllen got plenty of expensive treatments, but not necessarily the treatment they need. Rather than a medical culture centered on quality and cost-effectiveness, McAllen’s has grown to emphasize quantity of treatments — largely because Medicare provides the financial incentives for it. If that’s the future of our health-care system, we’ll soon be sunk. Lessons about what’s working well must be applied with urgency throughout the country. Decisions about public-option insurance plans and how to pay for covering the uninsured will have little meaning if overall costs bankrupt us. In Snohomish County, Providence and The Everett Clinic have been on the leading edge of innovation in the delivery of cost-effective care, and have piled up national awards for quality. They and some of the other top-performing regions are blazing trails the rest of the nation should be following. It’s gratifying — not to mention comforting — to live in one of the regions that’s leading the way toward cost-effective, quality health care. That the Everett area is recognized for it nationally is pretty cool, too.

1. Early morning gunfire wounds 2 in Everett 2. Father guilty of manslaughter in girl's death 3. ZZ Top fans get Everett buzzing 4. Crash devastating for toddler 5. Snohomish County budget passes, with a caveat 6. Fall 2009 Wesco All-League Teams 7. Laundry fire sparks concerns over smoke detectors 8. Two people injured in Highway 9 collision 9. Northrop: Boeing's 767 ‘no longer commercially viable' 10. Lynnwood police seek hit-and-run driver 2 - Top 10 Stories Most Talked about 3 - Top 10 Stories Most Emailed

• Holiday Lightings & Santa Sightings • Ruling in the pool • Archbishop Murphy takes title • A season of performing arts • Budget numbers have official fuming • Wildcats move on to 2A semifinals • Holiday Bazaars & Fairs Calendar • Edmonds’ Westgate Chapel serves up hospitality for holiday • Mavericks fall • Boeing will build, flight test and deliver 787s in South Carolina to spe ... • Snohomish County EDC promoting job growth in key industry clusters • $4 million grant to advance brain tumor research has Everett links • Providence medical center construction tops off its 12-story steel frame ... • Tulalip affordable housing project to be financed by KeyBank, Raymond Ja ... • Arlington's Lak of Ink has a growing following for Luke Kooyman's creati ... • Bank of the Northwest formed • Cascade Bank earns $1.6 million