Miami, Florida—Dr. Alejandro Badia, author of Healthcare from the Trenches, was the keynote speaker on a recent Cornell University Zoom Conference on the Challenges and Possible Solutions for U.S. Healthcare. Badia attended Cornell as an undergraduate and the conference reiterated many of the topics in his book, which has 27 contributors from across the healthcare industry.
During the conference, which was also attended by the Harvard and Yale Alumni Clubs, Dr. Badia noted that the current pandemic has brought to the public debate many of the reforms he has been advocating for decades. These include increased price transparency, utilization of more outpatient clinics and physicians banding together rather than fighting each other. Insurance companies are pitting physicians and providers against one another which degrades the quality of care for millions.
A major sticking point for Dr. Badia is how "Authorization is a Four-letter Word" in the insurance industry. He notes that the country is witnessing an astronomical growth of administrators dwarfing the growth of physicians, this while population growth outstrips the number of clinicians able to care for them. Essentially, Badia says, "The bureaucracy is asphyxiating us." He noted that insurance companies with separate codes for alligator and crocodile bites demonstrates "an absurd abuse of bureaucracy and regulations."
The one-hour presentation was 30-minutes of Dr. Badia followed by a 30-minute Q & A. Watch it entirely at https://vod.video.cornell.edu/media/Challenges%20and%20Possible%20Solutions%20for%20US%20Healthcare/1_huh2vqbh
"The fact is the U.S. has the most expensive health care system in the world by far. My field of orthopedic surgery can count almost 10% of that," Dr. Badia said during the conference. "My discipline within medicine really has a responsibility to try to rein in costs while maintaining quality. We are in this perfect storm. We know it's expensive, inefficient and often unpleasant. Something we don't talk about enough, but it should be a more pleasant experience when you're going to a hospital or to your physician's office."
Here are two of the slides Dr. Badia used:
6 Reasons Why Healthcare Innovation Is So Hard: (Harvard Business Review)
1. Players: Friends, foes and middlemen all influence
2. Funding: Revenue generation and capital acquisition unique
3. Policy: Regulations most pervasive of any industry
4. Technology: Foundation for all innovation and advancements
5. Customers: Increasingly engaged consumers…"patients."
6. Accountability: Innovations must be safe and cost-effective.
7 Solutions to Healthcare:
1. Involve healthcare providers (in trenches)
2. Minimize the middleman.
3. Make insurance companies/hospitals non-profit.
4. Encourage all-in-one outpatient clinics.
5. Require increased transparency in healthcare pricing.
6. Tech clinicians to collaborate.
7. Educate the public on real problems.
"Instead of simply squatting under the dark cloud of our current healthcare system, Dr. Badia standstall and offers the opinions and perspectives of healthcare providers and patients."—Grady Harp, Amazon Top 50 Hall of Fame Reviewer, 5-stars
"Dr. Badia passionately believes that the key participants in every healthcare transaction deserve a voice, and this is just what Healthcare from the Trenches does."—Susan Keefe, Midwest Book Review and Columbia Book Review, 5-stars
Dr. Badia explains, "Despite the political debates and media coverage on healthcare policy and reform, there remains little or no feedback from the people in the trenches—the physicians and other health care professionals who provide care to the patients. That's why I wrote Healthcare from the Trenches. My hope is that a broader discussion of the issues can be a catalyst to positive change."
Dr. Badia is the founder and chief medical officer of the Florida-based OrthoNOW®, a pioneering network of single-specialty, immediate orthopedic care centers in South Florida.
"The goal is to provide the patient with the care they need, at the time they need it, minimizing any interference to that process," says Dr. Badia. "This is a life and death matter and people are dying because of a flawed system. It's time for every American to be educated about the root causes of our healthcare crisis and demand meaningful reform."
Healthcare From the Trenches: An Insider Account of the Complex Barriers of U.S. Healthcare from the Providers and Patients' Perspective, ISBN 978-0-57868-099-6 (Paperback) $19.97, AISN B088PSH2RL (eBook) $2.99, 2020, Badia Hand to Shoulder, 465 pages, available at Amazon or www.DrBadiaBook.com Watch the book trailer here: http://bit.ly/BookTrailerDrBadia
Alejandro Badia, M.D., F.A.C.S. has been in the trenches with our broken healthcare system since 1989
A hand and upper extremity orthopedic surgeon at Badia Hand to Shoulder Center in Miami, Florida, Dr. Badia previously served as Chief of Hand Surgery at Baptist Hospital of Miami. He studied physiology at Cornell University and obtained his medical degree at New York University, where he also trained in orthopedics. A hand fellowship at Alleghany General Hospital in Pittsburgh was followed by an AO Trauma fellowship in Freiburg, Germany. He runs an active international hand fellowship and previously organized a yearly Miami meeting for surgeons and therapists that was devoted to upper limb arthroscopy and arthroplasty. In 2005, Dr. Badia cofounded the Miami Anatomical Research Center (M.A.R.C.), one of the world's largest surgical cadaveric training labs.
In 2008, he completed the Badia Hand to Shoulder Center, a fully integrated clinical facility for the upper limb also encompassing the Surgery Center at Doral, rehabilitation and an MRI imaging facility. More recently, Dr. Badia inaugurated OrthoNOW®, the first intermediate orthopedic urgent care center in South Florida. OrthoNOW® was officially franchised in early 2013 and is actively engaging healthcare entrepreneurs and surgeons, in North America and abroad, to open immediate orthopedic care facilities.
For more information on Dr. Badia, visit DrBadia.com, Orthonowcare.com, and DoralDOC.com.
Media Contact: For a review copy of Healthcare from the Trenches or to arrange an interview with Dr. Alejandro Badia, contact Scott Lorenz of Westwind Communications Book Marketing at scottlorenz@westwindcos.com or by phone at 248-705-2214. Follow Lorenz on twitter @abookpublicist