Is the Future of American Healthcare Digital?

By Patricia Salber MD, MBA (@docweighsin)

The transformation of U.S. healthcare could revolve around that marvelous little computer in our pockets: the smartphone.

How is U.S. healthcare broken? Let me count the ways:

• It is too expensive
• Too many people don’t have insurance to help pay for it.
• Even insured people are facing very high out-of-pocket costs because of high deductibles, increasing use of co-insurance that has people paying an unpredictable share of the cost instead of a predetermined copay.
• Overuse of marginally useful and useless interventions
• Too much dependence on drugs as the answer — in a recent NPR interview, psychiatrist Allen Frances pointed out that people with minor or situational depression are more likely to be prescribed an antidepressant than equally effective cognitive behavioral therapy
• Even in this era of personalized medicine, too many people are being treated with a one- size fits all approach.
• Consolidation in many sectors of healthcare (e.g., insurance, hospitals, medical groups) has diminished meaningful competition.
• And, even if we had competition, a lack of transparency about prices and expected…