Over the next two days, I’ll be blogging from the 2009 Connected Health Symposium, run by Partners Healthcare Center for Connected Health, in Boston.

The opening keynote at this year’s symposium was delivered by Stuart Altman, Professor of National Health Policy at Brandeis University, who spoke on the topic of healthcare reform and some of the challenges it brings.

In 1971, US spending on healthcare delivery was $75 billion, or 7.5% of GDP but today this has reached $2.5 trillion or approximately 17% of GDP. Many people have tried to address this for years but 3 clear issues have emerged that need to be addressed:

1)      Create a universal healthcare financing system

2)      Develop programmes to reduce the rate of growth in healthcare spending

3)      Improve the quality of care delivered

The current political discussions in the US try to address these issues and will likely reduce the overall federal spend but spend from other sectors may increase. These would include increased spending by states and increased payments for insurance by younger people.

Professor Altman then introduced what he called Altman’s Law: almost every powerful constituent group favours health reform but, if it is not their plan, they prefer the status quo. In the case of the current reform, the industry to see most negative impact will be the Insurance Companies – all other stakeholder groups will either get additional funding or stay the same, making it easier for the reform to succeed.

In conclusion he stated the need to change the payment and delivery system, through an appropriate but effective comparative effectiveness system that includes clinical and cost effectiveness components.