The U.S. Heath Care System: Current Problems

Escalating costs. Varying degrees of quality. Increasing dissatisfaction. The U.S. health care system has fallen into severe decline over the last decade, dramatically bringing into question the future of a trillion-dollar industry.

Is a revolution around the corner? Consumer's Medical Resource (CMR) sees an inflection point in the current health care delivery system in which the process is becoming consumer, not provider, driven.

The three key forces accelerating this transformation to a consumer-driven health care market are:

• Health care costs are escalating - again.
• Perceived lack of quality, dissatisfaction with the managed care system.
• The impact of Internet connectivity.

In response to these market place realities, CMR believes a consumer-driven approach is the best way to ensure that high quality, satisfactory, cost-efficient health care is delivered in the United States.

Consumer's Medical Resource (CMR) provides Medical Decision Support (MDS™) services to employees of FORTUNE 500, and other large organizations, who face serious, complicated, and chronic illness. MDS™ is a decision support service that offers patients in-depth, objective, personalized, and latest-breaking information on their diagnosis and available treatment options. The information is assembled and distributed by a physician-led team. These physicians are affiliated with "America's Top 5" medical schools.

This approach enables patients to fully understand and evaluate their treatment options so they can make the best decisions possible with their doctors. Moreover, CMR helps patients avoid medical mistakes and unnecessary procedures by equipping them better to question their prescribed care. In addition, MDS™ ensures that a patient's values and personal preferences are incorporated into a final decision.

Managed care has been provider focused in which the patient, ironically, has largely been excluded from decisions relating to their own care. Consequently, there is an enormous gap between what consumers want, and what they're able to get, in terms of current, comprehensive, objective, and personalized information on their diagnosis and treatment options. CMR believes that by placing the consumer at the center of the process, and empowering them with high quality information, they will generate improvements in all aspects of health care delivery -- quality of care, satisfaction, productivity, and reduced costs. Growing consumer demand for more access to care, shared decisions with their providers, and more overall choice in medical decision-making already reflect the change in expectations among Americans and mark the emergence of this new health care market.

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