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PROFESSIONAL ISSUESFormer Bush official seeks drastic quality improvementEx-Treasury secretary calls for eliminating nosocomial infections and drug errors. He also says it's possible to cut health care costs in half.By Andis Robeznieks, AMNews staff. Nov. 3, 2003. To most of the general public, Paul H. O'Neill is the member of President Bush's cabinet who went to Africa with rock star Bono on an economic aid tour and then was forced to resign. But to people involved in the movement to improve the safety and quality of America's health care system, the former U.S. Treasury secretary is approaching guru status. Known mostly for running the Pittsburgh-based aluminum producer Alcoa from 1987 to 1999 and serving as Treasury secretary from 2001 to 2002, O'Neill, 67, was hired by the federal government in 1961 as a computer systems analyst to look at ways to improve the Veterans Administration's health care system. More recently, in 1998 he helped found the Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiative and last February joined the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Board of Directors. It's his ideas, however, and not his resume that get safety and quality improvement activists fired up. O'Neill boldly calls for reducing health care costs by 50% and using the savings to pay for the health insurance of the 43 million people in the United States who don't have any. He thinks it's possible to eliminate all medication errors and hospital-acquired infections. The PRHI has similar bold goals, such as having the Pittsburgh area achieve the world's best patient outcomes in cardiac surgery, hip and knee replacement surgery, obstetrics and the treatment of depression and diabetes. "This is in no way about traditional notions of cost-cutting, like, 'Let's only change the bed sheets every third day.' This is about eliminating non-value-added things like when someone goes into a medical facility and they get an infection," O'Neill said. "We know how to eliminate people getting infections ... and by rigorously redesigning systems so that we eliminate exposure, we could have a huge improvement in outcomes and cost." [...]Full text of AMNews content is available to AMA members and paid subscribers.
Copyright 2003 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.
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