Managed Care - November 2008 - (Page 39)

tries the infrastructure that we take for granted to help us achieve that didn’t exist. For example, in the United States, if somebody has an acute emergency, you dial 911 and an ambulance arrives and helps you manage that. In a lot of places, that doesn’t exist. So I had to talk with a lot of people and learn a lot about health care in other countries. I found those lessons very valuable in thinking about health care strategy and how we manage insurance coverage. MC: What were the main things you focused on? SEPULVEDA: It was very clear to me that the way people think about health care has a lot of universality to it. It crosses cultures. People place a very high value on access to and receipt of health services. It may not be so universal that people are actively engaged in understanding what their risk factors are and are doing things for themselves — that’s a challenge we face. But people value health, people value access, people value receiving health care, people value relationships in health care. It has been quite striking to me how important the relationship between the individual receiving care and the person delivering the care is. What people understand and what they are willing to do is greatly influenced by that interaction. Another thing is that the indiscriminate provision of health care services — absent efforts to help people understand how to use those services — will lead to voracious appetites for consumption of health care services that add little value but a lot of cost to the individual, the company, and society. MC: That is true in the United States? SEPULVEDA: Absolutely. MC: How did you apply that knowledge at IBM? SEPULVEDA: It dawned on me that if we were going to develop a worldwide health care strategy, we had to build on those universal values, and we had to do that in a rapid-growth country with poor infrastructure, in a socialized country like France, and in a free market country like the U.S. What does that mean? It means that all other things being equal, we want to put a third of our chips on prevention. Second, we want to put a lot of emphasis on primary care. And third, we want to encourage our employees to be engaged in their health and with the health care system and to take accountability for their PHOTOGRAPH BY PETER HVIZDAK NOVEMBER 2008 / MANAGED CARE 39

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Managed Care - November 2008

Managed Care - November 2008 Editor’s Memo Contents News and Commentary Legislation & Regulation Letters Medication Management Compensation Monitor Do It Yourself for Less Biomarkers Promise, but Do They Deliver? Oncologists Complain About Drug Payment Consider Blood Pressure Self-Monitoring Q&A: Keep Industry in the Game Formulary Files Plan Watch Tomorrow’s Medicine Outlook Respiratory Syncytial Virus Managed Care Considerations Contents Continuing Education Objectives RSV Disease in the Pediatric Population In the Trenches RSV Infection in the Adult Population Health Plan Medical Director Health Plan Pharmacy Director RSV Issues and Solutions Assessment/Evaluation/Certificate Request Post-Test

Managed Care - November 2008

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