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How Consumer Directed Health Plans Fit Into the Healthcare Crisis

New Book Provides an Unbiased View of CDHPs and Details Steps Necessary for Change

NEW YORK (July 1, 2008)... Are consumer directed health plans the answer to today's rising healthcare costs? A new book takes a detailed, unbiased look at these hotly debated plans, explaining their pros and cons, and why they may make sense for some - but not all - of the population.

CDHPs are poised to hit the market with a force not seen since the advent of managed care. CDHPs are high-deductible health plans that give consumers the responsibility for purchasing healthcare services - with the goal of promoting healthy behavior. They have been attacked as being driven largely by employers and benefits consultants. And while CDHPs make sense for some of the population, they can have a negative impact on the population with lower incomes or significant health problems. The larger issue - which is the driving force behind the growth of CDHPs - is the sustainability of the current system for delivering and financing healthcare.

In Consumer Directed Health Care: A 360 Degree View, respected healthcare consultant Kim Slocum applies a uniquely broad viewpoint to the U.S. healthcare crisis. With three decades of experience in a variety of healthcare, pharmaceutical, and biotechnology firms, Slocum takes a non-biased view of this controversial new vehicle - unlike most of the existing literature on consumer directed health care, He presents data from both sides of the deep ideological divide explaining why these plans should work and why they might not.

Consumer Directed Health Care: A 360 Degree View first places high-deductible plans into the larger strategic context of the problems facing the U.S. healthcare system, separating them from the concept of enhanced consumer/patient engagement. From there, the book offers both sides of the high-deductible case and describes the conflicting evidence thus far on the effect of these plans. Finally, the book moves back to the strategic level to discuss alternatives to CDHPs, how best to engage patients, and how the importance of electronic medical records, robust health information exchanges and a fully operational National Health Information Network are critical to success. Consumer Directed Health Care: A 360 Degree View concludes with a discussion about the blending of HIT and "pay for performance" programs in which consumers would face different cost-sharing burdens for using providers who were both effective and efficient.

Advance praise for Consumer Directed Health Care: A 360 Degree View:

• "Kim Slocum has done a great job of explaining and analyzing complex health insurance issues that policymakers in both the public and private sectors need to understand, but often do not. He successfully challenges the widespread belief - dear to many employers, insurers and consultants - that the best way to fix the system is to have consumers pay a bigger share of the costs ... Everyone who wants to participate in the debate about health care reform should read his prescriptions for the future."
  -Humphrey Taylor, Chairman, The Harris Poll
• "Kim Slocum separates the rhetoric from reality in his new book... He is a veteran insider looking with a careful and dispassionate eye at the inside [and] his easy-to-read style makes the book even more effective. He gets to the heart of consumer-directed healthcare, takes a biopsy, and makes a quick and accurate diagnosis. I wish everyone inside the Beltway would read Slocum's new book!"
  -David B. Nash, MD, MBA, Department Chair of Health Policy, Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
• "Consumer Directed Health Care offers a top-notch synthesis of credible research on health care in the United States. Kim Slocum has sifted through an amazing plethora of research data… and has painted for us a picture of the health care challenges we face, the tragedy of lack of access to care, and the implications for our future if not addressed… . It is a must-read and a call to action for persons in policy and leadership positions in and out of health care and for anyone who wants to make sense of the complex dilemma in which US health care finds itself."
  -Margaret F. Schulte, DBA, FACHE, Editor, Frontiers of Health Services Management

About the Author
Kim D. Slocum is President of KDS Consulting, LLC, which assists healthcare organizations in finding strategic, sustainable solutions to business challenges. Before founding KDS Consulting, Kim worked for more than thirty-three years in a variety of healthcare, pharmaceutical, and biotechnology firms. Most recently, he was Director of Strategic Planning and Business Development at AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals where he helped lead the company's multi-year effort to develop innovative tools to better understand and shape its external environment. Kim is deeply involved in the field of healthcare information technology. He is also affiliated with Strategic Health Perspective - a forecasting service for clients in the healthcare industry - which is a joint venture of Harris Interactive, the health care futurist Ian Morrison, and the Harvard School of Public Health's Department of Health Policy and Management. In addition, he is also a Senior Scholar at Thomas Jefferson University's Department of Health Policy in his adopted home town of Philadelphia.

About Productivity Press
Productivity Press is the premier source of authoritative information on organizational improvement, offering the broadest selection of books and learning tools about lean methodologies, based on the Toyota Production System. Our health care product line is a primary source of leading-edge publications, workbooks, tools, and resources to improve the overall performance and quality of the healthcare system. For more information visit our website at ProductivityPress.com. Productivity Press is a division of The Taylor and Francis Group, www.taylorandfrancis.com.

A Culture of Rapid Improvement: Creating and Sustaining an Engaged Workforce

Consumer Directed Health Care: A 360 Degree View
Price: $55.00
Hardcover
160 Pages
ISBN: 9781563273919

To request a review copy, contact Ralph Bernstein at 212-216-9864 or Ralph.bernstein@taylorandfrancis.com.