Brookings Institution policy forum on 'customer-driven medicine'

Donna Cusano

Last Thursday, The Brookings Institution (Washington, D.C.) think tank hosted a policy forum on how digital technology could enhance the American health care system–in other words, what we’ve been covering here for five years.  Brookings’ Darrell West presented a paper, Customer-Driven Medicine: How To Create A New Health Care System (click link for PDF of full paper) on how the system he envisions using mHealth, remote monitoring, etc. will empower consumers while cutting costs.  One positive change he advocates is insurance payments to providers for same.  But another, rewarding physicians for providing ‘positive health outcomes’ rather than ‘quantity of tests’, is problematic because increased data often leads to earlier or more testing to catch developing health conditions–which is the point.