Date: February 14th 2014
To: Health Care Foundation
From: Jennifer Stafford, Program Officer
Re: Reorienting Americans to Primary Care Over Specialty Care
With health care costs constantly on the rise, for a number of reasons, many countries have more efficient cost effective systems then we do in the United States. For this reason, it is a good idea to understand why some of these have lower costs and more efficient systems.
In many countries, such as the United Kingdom, primary care is paid for by a public health fund (Jonas & Kovner, 2014). Primary care is a great way for detecting issues before they become huge expensive chronic issues, and because of this, countries that use this seem overall healthier. By offering base primary care it seems to an excellent incentive to take advantage of this in a system where everything is known for vast expense, even in the general thought of getting checked out.
By improving the way patients are cared for, and outsourcing only necessary procedures helps a doctor know his patient based on their history, and when they do have an illness or syptoms come up, he will better know how to treat them. If he can coordinate their care, and it costs the consumer less money, they will be more likely to stay with that doctor.
In the Netherlands if people stay within their regional area, and do not incur many health care costs during they year, they will get their deductible reimbursed (Jonas & Kovner, 2014). This is an excellent incentive for people to feel like they are being rewarded
