This post is by Kristine Migely, Community Relations Associate at The Minneapolis Foundation
Healthcare is an incredibly complex and ever-changing system. To keep up, we need to stay informed and advocate for ourselves. It’s also in our best interest to make sure everyone in our community has access to affordable, high-quality care.
Dr. Josh Riff
Last week, a group of At the Table participants came together to talk about the current and future state of healthcare. Dr. Riff, Medical Director of Target, led a discussion called “The Do it Yourself Patient: Alternate Sites of Healthcare Delivery.”
He talked about the future of our healthcare system and how it will affect our individual care and the health of the greater community, including services for people who are uninsured and underinsured.
Between 2000 and 2006, salaries rose just 20% while healthcare premiums rose 87%.
Healthcare consumers are becoming more and more cost-conscious, and they have more options than ever before to make choices. Among them is access to retail clinics such as Minute Clinic, Wal-Mart, and Target Clinic, which in some cases may be less expensive and more convenient as more people are finding it more difficult to see their primary care physicians for same-day appointments.
Dr. Riff also spoke about some of the cost-saving measures employers are beginning to adopt to save money — from televisits, e-visits, and in-home diagnostic equipment (think strep throat tests), to home-based genetic testing.
Checking the Vital Signs of the Community
No matter what sort of individual healthcare we might have, we all have a self-interest in the health of the greater community.
You may have heard about the impending elimination of the General Assistance Medical Care (GAMC), a state-funded program that provides health care for the uninsured. Dr. Riff discussed the impact of these cuts, where an estimated 35,000 Minnesotans will lose medical coverage in April of this year and will have to rely solely on free clinics or emergency rooms for their healthcare.
This will increase the impact on our emergency rooms and, as Dr. Riff explained, this primarily means HCMC in the metro area — the safety net for those without insurance who need medical care for everything from a sore throat to a major trauma.
According to willyoulose.org, HCMC and its patients will be dramatically impacted through these cuts. Without alternate funding, the hospital’s teaching and training programs, statewide care and disaster preparedness will be affected, putting an even larger strain on the already stretched services of this ER in particular.
This is just one piece of a very complicated system that we all rely on, whether we have health insurance or not. Not only do we need to keep up with our own care, but be aware of how changes within the healthcare system affect us all.
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