Reconfiguring the US Health Care System: Function, Form, and Feasibility

Award Year: 2004	Investigator: Harold Luft	Budget: $274,950	Categories: Health Reform, Healthcare Organization
Abstract: In Reconfiguring the U.S. Health Care System: Function, Form, and Feasibility, Harold S. Luft, Ph.D. searches for workable approaches to reorganizing American health care. Recognizing the daunting nature of this task, Dr. Luft starts with what works well, considers how key functions can be reorganized and financed, and examines how to engage and influence multiple stakeholders and use new technologies to promote change. Along the way, he tackles serious challenges: the difficulties for patients in navigating the health care system; fragmented payment systems and their added costs; the often-conflicting concerns and needs of providers, insurers, and the pharmaceutical industry; political realities; diagnostic and treatment uncertainties; and the role of interest groups. Yet Dr. Luft believes it is possible to think more creatively about solutions that could allow most stakeholders to be "winners." He plans to produce a book that focuses more on the health care system's actors and processes than on costs and coverage, and explores a series of options for reconfiguring the U.S. health care system.