Working together in teams and investing in primary care can improve health outcomes and reduce spending in the American health care system, a panel of experts told a packed room at Health Journalism 2013 Friday afternoon.

“You cannot tell me that better care and lower costs don’t go together because I’ve seen it,” said Donald Berwick, former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The best examples come from communities not policymakers, he said during the session entitled, “Controlling health care costs while improving quality.” And they inevitably involve patients, doctors, nurses and other providers working together, he added.

Berwick cited a healthcare project in Alaska, where team-based care has resulted in 50 percent fewer hospital bed days, 53 percent fewer emergency department admissions and 65 percent fewer specialty visits.

Berwick said the fact that the U.S. health care system continues to provide low value at high-cost is a “crisis” and people are scrambling to figure out how to fix it. Among the biggest problems that have led to waste in the health care system are pricing failures, uncoordinated care and unnecessary treatment, Berwick said. “More is not better,” he said. “We are going to have to change the way we think.” Continue reading →

Anna Gorman (@AnnaGorman) is a senior correspondent with Kaiser Health News. She attended Health Journalism 2015 on an AHCJ-California Health Journalism Fellowship, which is supported by The California HealthCare Foundation.