PFCD Urges Congress to Include Community Health Teams in Health Care Overhaul
Team Approach Will Improve Health and Save Billions of Dollars
Washington, D.C. (May 14, 2009) - Community-based health teams are improving patient outcomes and driving down health care costs in multiple states across the U.S. and should serve as a model for national health care reform, according to testimony before the U.S Senate by the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease (PFCD) today.Â
PFCD Executive Director Ken Thorpe, Ph.D., told the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee that community health teams (CHTs), which already exist in Vermont, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and soon West Virginia and Pennsylvania, are highly effective at managing and preventing disease.
CHTs usually include care coordinators, nutritionists, behavioral and mental health specialists, nurses and nurse practitioners, and social, public health and community health workers. Working together, the CHTs coordinate and manage patient care with providers, patients and their families to prevent and manage chronic illnesses, such as diabetes, hypertension and heart disease.
Dr. Thorpe advised lawmakers to apply a community health team approach to Medicare, which spends nothing on care management today.
"Today, there is no care management in Medicare, leading to high rates of preventable hospital admissions, readmissions, clinic and emergency room visits. If Medicare took the best practices approaches with proven results from the private sector and made it available nationally in the fee for service Medicare, the program would save money," said Thorpe. He added that well-managed programs have been associated with savings of 5 to 7percent—well over a 2 to 1 return on investment.
"I believe a central challenge we face in health reform is how to integrate effective primary prevention and care coordination into the traditional fee-for-service Medicare program. Success in integrating these care delivery components into Medicare will surely have spillover effects in how Medicaid and the private sector work to prevent and manage chronic illness as well," said Dr. Thorpe.Â
Other highlights of Dr. Thorpe’s testimony included:
- In 2010, we will spend about $395 billion in the traditional fee for service Medicare program. Over 95 percent of total spending in Medicare is linked to chronically ill patients.
- More than half of Medicare beneficiaries are treated for five or more chronic conditions yearly.
- Over 30 percent of the recent rise in Medicare spending in the last ten years is associated with the persistent rise in obesity in the Medicare population.
About the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease:
The Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease (PFCD) is a national coalition of patients, providers, community organizations, business and labor groups, and health policy experts committed to raising awareness of the number one cause of death, disability, and rising health care costs in the U.S.: chronic disease. For more information about the PFCD and its partner organizations, please visit: http://www.fightchronicdisease.org.
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--Statement of Kenneth E. Thorpe, PhD
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