The Critical Need for 4Healing^sm

  The Only Service that Tracks Practitioner Outcomes By Condition, By Practitioner.

Using Outcomes-Based Reporting to Achieve Successful Health Outcomes and Reduce Cost

Background factors – The Business Opportunity:  The only relevant metric for a patient seeking healthcare is a successful health outcome, with the exception of certain end-of-life issues.  Currently, the providers and payers of healthcare: doctors, health plans, insurance companies etc. systematically ignore this critical metric.1 Patient outcomes are simply not measured in a meaningful way – except by 4Healing^sm.  "In all fairness, I don’t think most doctors and hospitals even have a clue as to what their results are.  It’s not been a normal part of American medicine to provide that type of performance measurement or profiling of providers." – Dr. Sam Ho, Chief Medical Officer, PacifiCare (NY Times television 2007)  Practitioners do not know their own outcomes, much less the outcomes of other doctors to whom they refer patients. 4HEALING is the only source available that allows patients and doctors to choose an optimal practitioner for their specific problems based on the practitioners success working with their condition as reported by outcomes feedback.  Practitioners with exactly the same credentials and experience have widely different outcomes.  Years of outcomes data collected by 1-800-DOCTORS showed that medical outcomes matched physician reputation only 16% of the time. Fully 84% of patients experienced superior outcomes from lesser known, sometimes obscure practitioners.  Except for 4HEALING there is no objective way to differentiate practitioner success for a patient’s specific concern. 

Examples of problems highlighted in the national press that 4Healing^sm eliminates:

“…only 15% of what doctors did was backed by hard evidence. there is little or no evidence that many widely used treatments and procedures actually work better than various cheaper alternatives…When clinical trials were actually done, they showed that the treatment, costing from $50,000 to $150,000, didn't work.”  Business Week MAY 29, 2006  COVER STORY Medical Guesswork - From heart surgery to prostate care, the health industry knows little about which common treatments really work

“50%-80% of (employer health) costs are unnecessary and/or inappropriate…” Washington Monthly July 14, 2004

The current healthcare system systematically prevents successful health outcomes, market forces, and optimal treatment:2 The business of medicine is largely controlled by government and conventional fiscal intermediaries (Blue Cross, Aetna, UnitedHealth, Oxford, etc).  Private insurers tend to pay the way the government pays and providers who break Medicare rules in order to better serve the patient risk being barred from the entire Medicare program.  Medicare and Medicaid ignore outcomes, stifle entrepreneurial activity and financially punish efforts to lower costs or improve quality. 

There is no systematic reward for excellence and no penalty for mediocrity. Indeed, “a doctor who botches a surgical procedure, diagnostic test or drug prescription and then has to follow up with corrective action actually profits from his mistake. He gets paid for the botch-up and then again for mitigating the mistake.”3 Where conventional fiscal intermediary payment is the norm, markets tend to be bureaucratic and stifling. But in those health-care sectors where fiscal intermediary payment is rare or nonexistent, the market is vibrant, entrepreneurial and competitive e.g.  Despite tremendous growth and technological change, the real price of cosmetic surgery declined. Over the past decade the real price of Lasik surgery fell by 30%.

¨    4Healing helps its members achieve successful health outcomes by utilizing the science of medicine rather than the business of medicine. Take a couple of minutes to see how costly the business of medicine can be to both patient and employer.  Conventional healthcare business steers patients into costly and invasive procedures often when the science has shown those procedures to be marginally effective if at all.  Click to see  NYTimes video with edits

►  Doctors want to practice good medicine, but doctors are thwarted from practicing proper medicine because of outdated insurance restrictions. see video.  Moreover, recent ill-conceived "pay for performance" initiatives by insurers unfairly rank physicians and too often steer patients to the wrong doctor. 

►  "Most of us know more about the effectiveness of our deodorants than we do about the competence of our surgeons" see NYTimes article

►  "A substantial number of expensive procedures done these days actually prolong patient suffering and impede successful outcomes." Read article

►  Doctors are paid to perform procedures, not cure patients Read Article

►  Mediocre Doctoring the Norm -The New England Journal of Medicine study shows that "standard" care is received only 55% of the time, regardless of age, income, insured status, or location. Read Article

¨   Practitioners do not know their own outcomes, much less the other doctors they refer you to.  4Healing is the only source available that allows you to choose an optimal practitioner for your specific problems based on the practitioners success working with your condition as reported by outcomes feedback.  Practitioners with exactly the same credentials and experience have widely different outcomes.  Until 4Healing there was no way to find that out.

►  So when "Doctor A" refers a patient to "Doctor B",  the referral is not based on any science or outcomes measurement, but only very sparse anecdotal hearsay.  The frightening reality is that there is likely a practitioner with significantly more training, experience, and success for that patient’s condition nearby that "Doctor A" may never have even heard of.    

►  More than likely, there is a practitioner that has significantly more training, experience, and most importantly, more successful outcomes for your specific condition close by.  You or your doctor have no way of finding that out -- except through 4HEALING.    4Healing is the world's only resource that collects outcomes feedback from every employee member and every practitioner.  4Healing is designed to help both doctor and patient find optimal care.

¨ SEE THE EVIDENCE: "In all fairness, I don’t think most doctors and hospitals even have a clue as to what their results are.  It’s not been a normal part of American medicine to provide that type of performance measurement or profiling of providers." – Dr. Sam Ho, Chief Medical Officer, PacifiCare (NY Times television 2005) 

►  Take two minutes to see a startling 2 minute edited NYTimes video  It shows the story of the Chief Medical Officer of a major health insurance company who needed help:  There simply could not be a better informed doctor.  Yet, all that knowledge and experience could not help. 

►     Dr. Ho's position was Chief Medical Officer of a major health insurance company;

►     He had access to any and all of the practitioners in the national network.

►     He had access to all of the insurance data from all of the practitioners.

►   He had access to all of the "disease management" companies, expensive "second opinion" companies, and every other resource of a major health carrier.

                 Click to see 2 minute edited NYTimes video

¨  4Healing can help you make a much better practitioner choice than any other source, including hospitals, universities, medical schools, doctors, nurses, referral services, or any other source.  The reason is simple and common sense: 4Healing is the only company that tracks treatment outcomes by practitioner, by condition.  The importance of this breakthrough cannot be overstated.   

¨  4Healing^sm helps close the 20 year gap between the SCIENCE of medicine and the PRACTICE of medicine.  Payers and patients are suffering and wasting billions because of this lag,  Our extensive information not only helps make sure you find out about the latest science, but more importantly, which practitioner has had success with the latest science.  
Click to see  NYTimes and C. Rose Video example (3 min.)