Don Crandlemire's blog

Competition Works in Healthcare – Real Life Success Stories

At OHM, we believe that competition is the solution to the crisis facing our health care system.  To prove our point, we look no further than the real-life experiences of two of our principals, Dr. Len Fromer and Peter Hayes. 

The Supreme Court has spoken.  As the country reacts, favorably and unfavorably, to the Court’s decision on health reform a few indelible truths remain:
 

Competition is crucial in driving change, in any industry, and healthcare is no different. A competitive environment drives innovation, efficiency, higher quality and lower cost. Industry incumbents have argued against competition countless times over the course of our country’s economic history, and in every instance, the forces of the free market have driven positive change, which benefits the consumer.

A recent survey suggest that the ever-escalating health cost crisis may have hit a tipping point (http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/employers-step-up-effo...) .  According to the report, employers who are fed up with the stranglehold that employee health costs have had on their businesses have indicated a readiness to try new and innovative strategies in an effort to get a handle on these costs.  With its unique RFI generation tool that promotes competition among medical providers, OHM is perfectly-positioned to serve employers ready for dis

Open Health Market is pleased to introduce the Surgery Center of Oklahoma as our newest participating provider.    Click here to see its OHM profile.   The Surgery Center of Oklahoma is a fully accredited multispecialty surgery center that embraces the OHM philosophy of transparency, value and accountability in the delivery of healthcare services.    Its refreshing approach to healthcare delivery, including offering fixed "bundled" prices for surgical services, goes to the core

Open Health Market is proud to offer its new individual health purchasers tool designed to empower healthcare consumers.  Through OHM, individuals in need of elective medical or surgical procedures can post a request to the marketplace in search of the doctor, hospital or surgery center that offers them the best value to serve their health needs.

OHM was built to bring buyers and sellers of healthcare services closer together to promote transparency and the benefits of free market dynamics.  As I have blogged about before, the further the economic distance between buyers and sellers in any market, the more inefficient the market becomes.  Our current healthcare marketplace – burdened by inefficient middle men – is inefficient, lacks transparency and is (to say the least) consumer unfriendly.  The financial burdens of these inefficiencies have reached a tipping point.  Our country can no longer afford the

In a June 17, 2011 article, The Economist summed it up perfectly when it said, “America has a talent for wasting money on health care”.  The article pointed out that in 2009 alone, the United States spent between $600 and $850Billion in avoidable or unnecessary health care expense.    This is a phenomenon unique healthcare.  Why?   As The Economist article points out, “All these problems . . . are due to a simple, structural failing:  the more services a hospital provides, the more it is paid”.

The USA Today reports today that in an otherwise sluggish economic recovery, the healthcare industry is the biggest "winner" having added 449,000 jobs during the downturn and an additional 438,000 jobs since. See, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2011-05-19-job-creation-recession_n.htm.   Contrast this to the massive job loss in other segments of our economy.  The point, as has been discussed previously in this blog, is that the healthcare industry has larg

During the past week, Medicare's trustees issued their annual report and stated that the program will become insolvent in 2024, 5 years sooner than they had projected in last year's annual  report. 
(http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/Medicare/26470