Patients vs. Consumers: Healthcare Trends and Innovative Solutions

The fate of the healthcare industry is uncertain. Healthcare trends brought on by the Affordable Care Act and technological advances have transformed patients into cost-conscious consumers. Professionals are faced with improving quality of care with maintaining projected costs as well as patient satisfaction.

Join us to learn more about the unique economic characteristics of health care that have spurred dissatisfaction with the fee-for-service reimbursement system. Learn how these unique characteristics are also challenges for value-oriented approaches to payment models. Dr. Driessen will address:

• Insights into the complexities of healthcare payment models
• The impact of clinical best practices and financial incentives on Triple Aim outcomes
• The current system and how to find innovative solutions for the future.

Julia Driessen, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management in the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh. She has secondary appointments in the Department of Economics and the Department of Biomedical Informatics and is affiliated faculty at the Health Policy Institute. In 2011 Dr. Driessen completed her Ph.D. in Economics at the Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on how economic incentives can support, or hinder, clinical best practices, with an emphasis on outcomes that are both clinically and economically undesirable. She has examined these themes across an array of settings and interventions, including health information technology, Medicare prescribing, and inter-professional models of care.