Publisher's Synopsis
Despite passage of the ACA, everyday the equivalent of a US jumbo jet full of passengers fall from the sky killing all aboard, representing the numbers of preventable deaths of US medically underserved residents from treatment disparity, racism, lack of access and the refusal to provide affordability for health care services. Health care experts accept that the US health care system is broken, and some claim it is too big to fail. The fact patient in-hospital deaths now have become the third highest annual cause of US deaths, and the failure to support sustainable, affordable post-discharge timely monitored care transitions that avoids costly unnecessary hospital readmissions and emergency room visits, is strong evidence for implementing home and community based health care delivery that is innovative and technology driven. This book starts at the beginning of the US health care system and describes what went wrong, and why despite the knowledge of discriminatory action; the US Apartheid-like health care system continued to dominate and institutionalized racial care delivery excluding millions of US residents. Even when new laws are enacted to "fix" the identified failures and weaknesses of the US health care delivery infrastructure and business models; the willingness to re-frame entrenched profit driven business models to achieve the goals imposed by the ACA proved to be difficult. As a result, established institutional providers are annually paying billions in ACA imposed fines for high levels of patient readmissions that could be mitigated through adopting proven affordable technology innovations and community partnerships. For reforms to take hold in delivering affordable health care to millions of intentionally underserved US residents, there has to be both trust building and patient-centered care activities undertaken to overcome past intentional misconduct and distrust of the health care system and its providers. Our presentation offers solutions and a path forward to point out how the underserved can and must become an active participant in their health care, as well as proffers comment on and comparisons to existing and new entrant care delivery models. Finally, a business case is made showing how much of the US annual health care spend that is currently available to support the underserved sector of the US population, and demonstrating how much in savings can be realized through use of telemedicine technology and innovative applications supporting PCPs and hospitals.
