PROFESSIONAL ISSUES

Patient-centered model offered as road to reform

An advocacy group picked the model as the winning entry in a health system reform contest. Now it wants to help change the system.

By Damon Adams, AMNews staff. Jan. 19, 2004.

From Seattle, the call went out for proposals: Come up with an idea to fix the U.S. health care system and win $10,000. Contest judges cast their votes, selecting Vaughan Glover, DDS, a dentist in Arnprior, Ontario, as the winner.

Judges didn't think it strange that they picked a Canadian's idea to cure what's plaguing America's health system. They liked his patient-centered model, believing it uses the best of the American and Canadian systems.

Now contest organizers hope to turn the best ideas into reality.

"The contest is not an end. It's a beginning. We want to effect a positive change in health care," said Kathleen O'Connor, a Seattle health care consultant and writer who ran the contest.

O'Connor put together the contest to spark ideas about health system reform. Proposals could be up to 50 pages in length and had to address issues such as regulatory challenges, financing and management structure.

O'Connor received more than 100 entries from 33 states and Canada. Making their pitches for reform were physicians, dentists, teachers, students and others from many professions. There were ideas about medical liability insurance, employee-decided medical coverage and other reforms. "It hit a nerve with people," she said.

Nine judges with health care backgrounds convened in Oregon and listened to the top 10 finalists' proposals.

In late October, the panel picked Dr. Glover's plan for the $10,000 prize. Second place got $5,000, while third collected $1,000.

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