Kevin Schulman, MD;
Professor of Medicine;
Clinical Excellence Research Center;
Department of Medicine, Stanford University

ABSTRACT:

The cost of private health insurance is approaching $20,000 per household in 2018, while the US spends almost 5% of GDP more on healthcare than any other country. With the aging of the population, these economic challenges are likely to become more severe absent major changes in the health care market. This talk will highlight some of the economic data on health care costs in the US, motivating a need for change. We will then discuss the potential role that information technology could play in an effort to drive the market to a new model of great care at a lower cost (the mission of the Stanford Center for Clinical Excellence (CERC)). The talk will explore the role of organizations on this economic transformation and leave with the question of whether we can achieve a significant transformation of health care markets by embedding technology within existing organizational models, or whether realizing the full economic benefits of technology will require new organizational models.