The VA Healthcare System Model
Talking with David Shulkin, MD – the former United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs serving under President Donald Trump at the World Healthcare Congress (WHCC19).
He shares the early drivers to his long career in medicine that centered on informing and educating patients which permeates throughout his career as a physician and beyond. He talks about his experience working for President Obama and President Trump and the privilege of being a member of the cabinet leading the largest healthcare system in the country.
We talk about the lessons we can draw from the Veterans Healthcare system and importantly as he puts it does not think we should
take the VA system and expand this for everyone in the US
We talk about the current hot topic of “Medicare for All” but as he points out this would improve access but retains the fee for service system (FFS) and fragmentation that continues to hamper our healthcare system and he believes that we can do better than that.
Listen in to hear his thoughts on incremental changes we can apply to our system to bring about the improvements and change we are desperately seeking:
- Our primary focus needs to be on access – until that’s fixed our system continues to trail
- Transparency of information – which should be easy and relatively low cost to fix, and
- Align our payment systems between clinical and financial/business models
