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By Cheryl Powell
Beacon Journal medical writer
POSTED: 11:16 a.m. EDT, Oct 06, 2008
Summa President and Chief Executive Thomas J. Strauss unveiled a plan for health-care reform called ''Nine for '09'' during the Summit Health Policy Summit this morning at the Akron-Summit County Public Library in downtown Akron.
The event, attended by about 230 people, is part of an effort by Summit County's largest employer to take a bigger role in pushing for health-care reform on a national level.
The ''Nine for '09'' initiative is a list of principles that Summa leaders believe should guide national efforts to fix problems in health care, Strauss said.
''We have reached a tipping point in health care when it comes to health-care reform,'' Strauss said. ''At the end of the day, even if most of the debate occurs on the national level, all health care is local.
''As the conversation goes forward, we believe community-based systems need to have a seat at the table,'' he said.
These are the ''Nine for '09'' points that Summa is promoting:
• Make prevention of illness and disease a priority.
• Use a mix of public and private solutions and insist on individual responsibility to ensure health coverage for everyone.
• Do a better job of controlling health-care costs by coordinating care across health and social boundaries.
• Boost investment in research aimed at improving everyday health-care delivery.
• Recruit more nurses and primary-care doctors to avoid a shortage within the next couple decades.
• Move medicine into the 21st century by switching to electronic medical records and other health information technology that reduces errors.
• Prepare to care for the aging population by recruiting and realigning health-care professional recruitment, training and practice models to serve older adults.
• Mandate a community benefit standard that requires publicly traded insurance companies to provide an appropriate level of charity care, community investment and medical education.
• Provide health-care consumers more information about the quality and outcomes at hospitals and doctor practices.
During his talk, Strauss also defended Summa's plans to build a 100-bed, for-profit hospital in Northern Summit County in partnership with local doctors.
Critics passed out fliers against the proposed hospital to people this morning as they pulled into the library's parking garage.
The flier, although not signed, repeated many of the claims made by cross-town rival Akron General Medical Center that the new hospital will ''cherry-pick'' insured patients and threaten nonprofit hospitals.
But Strauss said the new facility will have the same standards as all of Summa's hospitals and will extend charity care north to residents of northern Summit and southern Cuyahoga counties.
The event also featured speeches by Dr. Robert Berenson, a Medicare expert and senior fellow at the Urban Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C.; and Chris Jennings, a national health policy expert who served as senior health-care adviser to President Clinton.
Cheryl Powell can be reached at 330-996-3902 or chpowell@thebeaconjournal.com.
Summa President and Chief Executive Thomas J. Strauss unveiled a plan for health-care reform called ''Nine for '09'' during the Summit Health Policy Summit this morning at the Akron-Summit County Public Library in downtown Akron.
The event, attended by about 230 people, is part of an effort by Summit County's largest employer to take a bigger role in pushing for health-care reform on a national level.
The ''Nine for '09'' initiative is a list of principles that Summa leaders believe should guide national efforts to fix problems in health care, Strauss said.
''We have reached a tipping point in health care when it comes to health-care reform,'' Strauss said. ''At the end of the day, even if most of the debate occurs on the national level, all health care is local.
''As the conversation goes forward, we believe community-based systems need to have a seat at the table,'' he said.
These are the ''Nine for '09'' points that Summa is promoting:
• Make prevention of illness and disease a priority.
• Use a mix of public and private solutions and insist on individual responsibility to ensure health coverage for everyone.
• Do a better job of controlling health-care costs by coordinating care across health and social boundaries.
• Boost investment in research aimed at improving everyday health-care delivery.
• Recruit more nurses and primary-care doctors to avoid a shortage within the next couple decades.
• Move medicine into the 21st century by switching to electronic medical records and other health information technology that reduces errors.
• Prepare to care for the aging population by recruiting and realigning health-care professional recruitment, training and practice models to serve older adults.
• Mandate a community benefit standard that requires publicly traded insurance companies to provide an appropriate level of charity care, community investment and medical education.
• Provide health-care consumers more information about the quality and outcomes at hospitals and doctor practices.
During his talk, Strauss also defended Summa's plans to build a 100-bed, for-profit hospital in Northern Summit County in partnership with local doctors.
Critics passed out fliers against the proposed hospital to people this morning as they pulled into the library's parking garage.
The flier, although not signed, repeated many of the claims made by cross-town rival Akron General Medical Center that the new hospital will ''cherry-pick'' insured patients and threaten nonprofit hospitals.
But Strauss said the new facility will have the same standards as all of Summa's hospitals and will extend charity care north to residents of northern Summit and southern Cuyahoga counties.
The event also featured speeches by Dr. Robert Berenson, a Medicare expert and senior fellow at the Urban Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C.; and Chris Jennings, a national health policy expert who served as senior health-care adviser to President Clinton.
Cheryl Powell can be reached at 330-996-3902 or chpowell@thebeaconjournal.com.
Comments
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Sterling, Oh
Posted 01:30 PM, 10/06/2008
Health care in the USA will only be affordable after every corporation, farmer, business, outsourcer sweatshop, and nonprofit, tax-exempt, organization and Church markets the cost of every citizens health care and every workers, consumers, and taxpayers living (including pension and health care) in the wholesale and retail price of his or her product and service. Enabling parents to love, nurse, nurture, discipline, protect, and provide, for every child (job) they conceive and fund schools, infrastructure, national security, government services, and etc.; with money derived from wages or independent business profit.
Posted 12:55 AM, 10/07/2008
Why doesn't Summa work on their own patient care first before outlining a plan for everyone else? Their ER is a joke, absolutely the worst patient care I have ever received. I've never known a doctor or nurses to be so short and cold to a crying, confused patient before. I was even refused written instructions on how to use the medicine they gave me....and then I was ushered out the door. I thought using their ER was smart since I had surgery there recently and am having pain in the same area where I was last operated on. They couldn't have cared less.
You must fix the cracks in your own foudation before you can fix your neighbor's!
