20 June 2013

Would a SEC for Healthcare Be Appropriate?


When I started reading this, I admit I burst out laughing. A broken medical system trying to correct what is wrong with itself? Yes, this is needed, but without Federal legislation, how will this ever get off the launching pad?

Granted, I have a shortage of knowledge about the medical world, but the way hospital executives and hospital boards fabricate and forget to make things known, how can we ever expect any reliability in what they say? It is true that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services cannot be reliable for ratings for most medical situations, they have too large a stake in giving out ratings where there is something to be gained and money is in the mix.

The question is what would the SEC type regulator for the medical be named. Even the SEC has had its problems in its 80 some years of existence and money produces strange results. However, it is time for change and this may be the vehicle to make this happen. This is still in the formative stage and therefore nothing is fixed or even close to being finalized.

In reading the blog by Peter Pronovost, MD, PhD, Director of the Johns Hopkins Medicine Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, I have been researching what some of the possibilities might be. Dr. Pronovost did state the following in his blog, “A SEC-like entity could have private sector rule-setting, public sector auditing and transparency, and private sector reanalysis, working from a common book of truth.”

There will be a conference September 23-25 in Baltimore, MD and the details are here and it lists the planned agenda for the three days. If I had gotten my act together and read and realized that June 21 is the last day of early bird registration, I should have posted this earlier. Patients and patient-advocacy groups are encouraged to attend.

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