While operational improvement for reducing costs is a large part of improving healthcare quality, it should not be the first priority in healthcare innovation, according to an editorial in Forbes.
Due to the lack of effective treatments for many chronic diseases, including Alzheimer's disease, pancreatic cancer and brain tumors, improving the value of certain types of care can only go so far, according to editorial author David Shaywitz, MD. Instead of "optimizing these relatively poor choices," healthcare should focus on the development of better treatments and technologies to transform the field, Dr. Shaywitz writes.
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To avoid delivering what Dr. Shaywitz terms "low-value medicine served with marvelous efficiency," he urges healthcare stakeholders to consider the idea that quality is not just about "removing the negative, and eliminating what clearly doesn't work in healthcare; [it] should also require us to continuously ask how we can use emerging technologies to advance the frontiers of knowledge, especially in areas where the very best evidence-based care is clearly not good enough."
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