The New England Journal of Medicine
October 7, 2010
Low-Cost Lessons from Grand Junction, Colorado
By Thomas Bodenheimer, M.D., M.P.H., and David West, M.D.
According to the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care, average per capita Medicare spending in Grand Junction was $6,599 in 2007 - 24% lower than the national average and 60% below high-cost Miami.
Moreover, Grand Junction scored above the national average on a number of measurements of preventive care, diabetes, asthma, and other quality metrics.
We believe that seven interrelated features of the health care system that may explain the relatively low health care costs could be adopted elsewhere. These are leadership by the primary care community; a payment system involving risk sharing by physicians; equalization of physician payment for the care of Medicare, Medicaid, and privately insured patients; regionalization of services into an orderly system of primary, secondary, and tertiary care; limits on the supply of expensive resources, including specialists, beds, and equipment; payment of primary care physicians for hospital visits; and robust end-of-life care. These features could be replicated in other markets - though generally not without political battles.
Comment: Although I am taking a break this week and won't provide a comment here, an excellent commentary on the Bodenheimer and West article has been posted by Joshua Freeman, Professor and Chair of the Department of Family Medicine for the University of Kansas School of Medicine. He states, "Grand Junction, Colorado may not have all the answers to our health care system, any more than Canada or Britain or Switzerland do. But it is doing a lot of things right, it is saving money, and it is improving the health of the community, and that's a lot more than most areas in the US are doing."
For Josh Freeman's full commentary:
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