Avoidable Care Conference Foments Revolution

Within a handful of miles of the birthplace of the American Revolution, a new revolution was being fomented the last week of April. The Avoiding Avoidable Care Conference wasn’t so much about the epidemic of unnecessary medical care or the costs of unnecessary care. It was a rallying cry to the medical community, and to doctors in particular, to reclaim the profession of medicine from the country’s market-dominated healthcare system.

“There is a moral absolute in medicine to help and never to wrong the patient. No such moral absolute can be found in the marketplace,” said renowned cardiologist Bernard Lown, founder the Lown Cardiovascular Research Foundation, one of the organizations sponsoring the conference...

...An audience of about 150 (mostly doctors) met to discuss the issues contributing to unnecessary medical care – which, by some estimates, runs into the billions of dollars – including defensive medicine, volume-based payments, lack of evidence, poor reimbursement for primary care services, the preponderance of waste in the system and the pros and cons of payment reform as the panacea to the system’s troubles...