Lurelle Robbins is a member of our Community Leadership Council.

I had the opportunity to spend 6 hours at OHSU yesterday in an Immersion Program for Legislators and Legislative Candidates as a guest of Wynne Wakkila, candidate in HD 26.  I was impressed by the whole experience and by the comments of the President of OHSU and several other department heads as they spoke and presented OHSU to us.  All of them incorporated the Triple AIM in their conversations and it is obvious that OHSU for one has been the beneficiary of our – We Can Do Better’s – early and ongoing support for the Triple AIM.

I believe we should congratulate ourselves for our efforts which have helped to bring Oregon to this point in Health Care Transformation in Oregon; focused on improving patient outcomes, reducing costs and improving the patient experience. While I sometimes become jaded, I was impressed by the opportunities that still lie ahead for us to consider; what does the Triple AIM really mean and what do we see as the next phase or phrase of our support for transformation.

Let me describe one aspect of thought:  one of the GME students spoke about her work and as she concluded she commented something to the effect that what is necessary is a way to take what they are learning and turn it into a treatment drug. Obviously OHSU and all players in the medical field need funds to operate and some of those funds come from research dollars while other funds come from patient care dollars through private payment and government payment.

While there is some excellent research on prevention being done at the Linus Pauling Institute at OSU I don’t yet see the real recognition and incentive for research into prevention of disease.  And then how does prevention become pervasive in the minds of all Oregonian’s?

As Governor Kitzhaber has discussed from the beginning  –  thoughts – on formation of Arhcimedes and the need for health care reform – the increasing costs of the health care system are unsustainable.

We, no doubt,  can have a slowing of the cost curve in the current era with the work that is being done, in our Transformation via CCO’s etc,  however,  I am afraid that we can not control the spiraling cost of health care if we do not shift our focus to preventing the onset of disease. In the medical community, prevention, still seems to mean diagnosing the disease earlier so we can treat it with surgery or some drugs.  Prevention should mean not ever getting the disease.

There is much evidence and or speculation that the current corporate food and agricultural industry, the pesticide industry and the stress and toxic environment industries are creating an environment that leads to increasing illness.   We must ask WHY – is there increased incidence of diabetes, ADHD, autism, asthma and obesity?   A lack of research or treatment drugs can not explain these increases and to think we can decrease our health care costs by continuing to fund with our tax dollars and our Emotional dollars the very industries that are surely the culprits in an ever increasing need or desire for health care.  Surgery for obesity is not prevention.

We Can Do Better at leading our state to become the most healthy population in the country – it will take a paradigm shift – We Must help to direct The Triple AIM in its shift to health. True cost savings will only come about  when less people are sick and all people are less sick. True health (better outcomes) will come about when people choose through knowledge and with support (changing society norms) to make choices toward health (don’t smoke, don’t do drugs, don’t shoot people, don’t eat too many Big Mac’s, and don’t eat pink slime etc.)  There is a whole “To Do”  list that can come if we chose to take on this discussion.

True happiness (better patient experience) will come about when people are active and energetic because they are not bogged down in toxic unhealthy living.  With corn syrups, fats, antibiotics and other sickeners in practically every food we consume, health is not possible. It is not the individual’s fault. When people don’t need to live in and out of a hospital or a CCO – and have energy and health – they are excited by life, family and opportunity – then we will have a truly better experience.

We Can Do Better
Lurelle