
Realigning Economic Incentives Between Patients and Physicians
Humans are motivated by, and make decisions based on, incentives. And, currently, incentives for patients and physicians are misaligned. There has been a great need for a system that allows for the incentives of patients and physcians to be aligned. The RHM platform is the first to truly do this.
Realigning
Incentives
One incentive for patients that must be discussed is the desire to work with – especially when discussing regenerative therapies – a “physician,” rather than a “provider.” Without going into great detail here, a “provider” is one who provides medical treatment based on last century’s model of “treat and street” or chemicals. A “physician” is one who is skilled in the art of healing. When considering the process of regenerative therapies, it is incredibly important to work with one who is skilled in the art of healing.
The RHM platform marries the process of regenerative treatments and therapies with physicians who are actually skilled in the art of healing.
How do we do this? Let’s look at the other options first.
If a third party pays for treatments, there is no “skin in the game” (relationship) for any of the three parties.
It is hard – almost impossible – to align economic interests between two parties – patients and physicians – when neither party has a say in what things cost. There is not incentive for patients to shop prices because patients get treatments based upon what their insurance company will pay for.
Conversely, physicians have no incentive to keep costs down because, frankly, the model does not require them to do so. (While the ACA, or “Obamacare,” was supposed to provide incentives for physicians to try and keep prices down, in reality, providers are perverse incentives to do the opposite by ordering more tests than necessary to avoid frivolous lawsuits.)
Without considering quality of life for either patient or physician, there are three ways currently being employed to advance the field of regenerative medicine:
Insurance Miracle
Hope insurance eventually covers the high costs of treatments
Keep it as is
Convince people to keep paying high prices
Lower prices
"A race to the bottom"
Lower prices
for treatments
This would be very good for patients and their pocket books, but the physician would continue to feel like a rat in a cage on a wheel simply running in circles.
Because doctors would have to make up the lost revenue from lower prices with an increased volume of patients. Good for the bottom line, but doctors are already stretched to the max as it is.
This only exacerbates one of the biggest complaints of patients toward doctors, in general, let alone the field of regenerative medicine: a general lack of time that patients actually get with their physician. With eight (8) minutes being the average time a physician spends with a patient, it’s no wonder this is one of the biggest complaints. Especially when most of that 8 minutes is spent with the doctor staring at a screen or talking in technical jargon, lack of satisfaction abounds.
It is incredibly difficult, if not nearly impossible, to develop and build a real relationship between a patient and a physician in the current environment. While patients desire a real relationship with their physicians, it will never happen because there is no incentive for the doctor to maintain that relationship. It is a “one and done and ‘next’” transaction. Physicians ns do not seek to intentionally reduce patient interactions – it just happens in these conditions. Patients can receive care in this model – we just get more of the exam in terms of the problems of modern health (sick) care. This includes limited access to doctors, increased costs, etc.
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