Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
Another enlightening comment from an Ashvegas reader. Thank you. Please keep them coming.
Asheville was singled out along with 10 other communities for providing “low-cost, high quality” health care service. Joe Damore recently traveled to Washington D.C. to make a statement that health care needs as little change as possible.
Atul Gawande, M.D. a Harvard professor recently wrote an excellent piece for the New Yorker about health care cost and quality.
It revealed that McAllen, TX has very poor quality and very high cost because the community follows a profit/procedure-driven model. It contrasted this with the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota which provides excellent quality at a very low-cost when the physicians are salaried and work as teams.
And as mentioned in a previous comment he singled out Asheville on NPR for providing quality at low cost.
Unfortunately, the accolades are for previous performance and do not reflect the direction Joe Damore and Frank Ford are angling for.
Under Damore’s leadership, Mission hospital is attempting to force on Mission’s physicians a procedure-model of physician compensation based on RVU’s (relative value units). This is much like the model of the lowest quality in the country, McAllen, TX. It is the exact model that drives quality down, and hospital revenues up.
This model would be excellent for Mission Hospitals’ coffers, as insurance companies and Medicare would be billed as much and as often as possible. Unfotunately it is also proven that this method is bad for patients.
His hypocrisy in accepting credit for high quality while attempting to force-feed a proven low-quality system on physicians speaks for itself.
I hope everybody reading this understands that this is NOT just some rift between Joe, Brian, the Board et al and the physicians. This is MUCH bigger and wider than that. Every Mission employee, from physicians to the lowest paid position and every patient that darkens the door is affected by this leadership problem. This is about compassion and mercy vs greed, ego and arrogance. This is about being proud of what our hospital system stands for.
Dont ever mention JD and FF without placing Frank’s mouthpiece in the middle – Brian Aston – anything that comes from FF comes straight from Brian Aston – right boss? "right boss" heard a lot on the Mezz……