ProMedica forum urges joint effort to cut health costs

Within a year, ProMedica plans to talk with business leaders about helping fund health initiatives in a couple of Toledo’s poorest ZIP Codes.

That’s one way the community can collaborate to improve health care locally, including lowering the incidence of obesity and other medical issues, said Randy Oostra, ProMedica’s president and chief executive officer.

ProMedica held its quarterly symposium Tuesday at WGTE public broadcasting’s studio. About 50 people were on hand for a discussion on health-care collaborations, which also was shown online in a live Web broadcast by WGTE.

No matter what happens in federal health-care reform and this year’s presidential election, health-care costs are not sustainable, Mr. Oostra said. Employers already are expected to pick up 17 percent of health-care costs in 2020, for example, up from 10 percent, he said.

“We’ve shifted costs to employers,” Mr. Oostra said. “That can’t continue any longer.”

Reform and the country’s aging population, meanwhile, are causing disorientation among health-care providers simultaneously facing work-force shortages and lowered payments, Mr. Oostra said. President Obama wants to cut $320 million from Medicaid and Medicare in the next decade, he said.

“We’re going to add a lot of people to the health-care rolls, but yet we’re cutting payments,” Mr. Oostra said.

Economist Karen Davis, president of the Commonwealth Fund in New York and a ProMedica board member, also spoke and answered questions during the symposium. So did Dr. David Grossman, commissioner of the Toledo-Lucas County Health Department.

Dr. Grossman said health-care reform will improve insurance coverage for Americans but won’t tackle medical costs. Obesity, smoking, and other unhealthy lifestyle choices need to be addressed, with those who indulge having to pay more for health-care coverage, he said.

“I think people need to take … responsibility in their own lives,” Dr. Grossman said.

Ms. Davis, who lives in Toledo, said the Commonwealth Fund will release results next month of a study on health-care performance in more than 300 geographic areas nationwide. Preliminary results from the private foundation’s study found that Toledo ranked in the top 25 percent among Ohio’s cities on access, although it ranked in the second 25 percent on quality and cost, she said.

Federal reform, Ms. Davis said, is the biggest fundamental change in health care since Medicare was created in 1965. The goal is to improve patient access, outcomes, and experiences while decreasing waste, all of which needs to be done with providers and insurers working together, she said. “We can’t really get there in silos or a loosely interconnected web of providers,” Ms. Davis said.

She added: “I think what we are seeing is this is a very challenging, exciting decade for health care.”

Contact Julie M. McKinnon at: jmckinnon@theblade.com or 419-724-6087.