Senate holds hearing on improving affordability through innovation
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee today held the fifth in a series of hearings on reducing health care costs, which focused on improving affordability through innovation.
Witness Jonathan Perlin, M.D., president of clinical services for HCA Healthcare and former chair of the AHA, shared how HCA innovations have improved outcomes and value by reducing elective preterm deliveries, hospital infections and sepsis. For example, the pre-term delivery initiative became the basis of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Strong Start for Healthy Mothers and Newborns program, estimated to save the Medicaid program over a billion dollars annually.
HCA also is leading initiatives to improve care and lower costs through timely identification of cancer patients, automating human labor with artificial intelligence tools, and stewarding laboratory tests more carefully, he said, and is part of Civica Rx, a new not-for-profit generic drug company that aims to reduce costs and stabilize the supply of essential generic medications.
Also testifying at the hearing were officials from a membership-based primary care program, employer health care purchasing cooperative, and King County, Wash.