Rethinking preventive medicine
Affordable Care Act of 2010 leads to more preventive care
One of the major components of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 is a strong emphasis on making preventive health care affordable and accessible to all Americans. Under the Act, both public and private health insurers must cover common preventive health care procedures such as annual physical exams, mammograms, colonoscopies, Pap smears and the like in full, with no out-of-pocket costs to the consumer. This represents a major policy shift for the U.S. health care system, which historically has focused more on treatment of illness rather than on wellness and prevention, and many health policy experts believe it will help reduce health care costs in the long run.
“A focus on preventive health care is important in terms of financial costs because it is very expensive to treat disease and rehabilitate individuals,” says Glenda Tali, RN, BSN, MSN, campus college chair at University of Phoenix Hawaii Campus. “For example, if you can prevent the development of diabetes through diet and exercise, you can also prevent the complications of diabetes such as renal failure and dialysis, blindness, limb amputation and rehabilitation.”
Shift in health care policy requires shift in mindset
Some policymakers have resisted a shift toward increased preventive medicine because they believe that paying more in the short term for more screening tests and procedures doesn’t justify the potential long-term savings. But Tali believes this is flawed logic. “Preventive health care most definitely can lower both short-term and long-term health care costs by millions of dollars,” she says. “Patient education is relatively inexpensive, while treating a patient with a largely preventable disease like type 2 diabetes is expensive. How much better do you think it is for the patient and the health care system to prevent the diseases rather than treat the diseases that are preventable?”
While preventive medicine might seem like a simple concept, it’s not one that the U.S. health care system has traditionally embraced. “As strange as it sounds, preventive health care is not glamorous,” says Tali. “Breakthrough treatments and miracle cures are much more interesting and intriguing to both health care providers and the public alike. We often don’t want to be told to change our diet, exercise to lose weight, quit smoking, etc. The mindset of the public is often ‘I can do whatever I want, and then get care when I get sick or hurt.’”
However, as U.S. health care costs continued to skyrocket, health care providers began to look at preventive medicine and patient education more seriously. “Only in the recent past have health care providers been educated to provide health promotion and disease prevention,” Tali says. “The focus has traditionally been on treatment, which is very costly. The only way to change the current situation in relation to preventive health care is to change the mindset of both health care providers and the public.”
Preventive health care starts with personal responsibility
Tali has some simple recommendations for how average Americans and their health care providers can shift their focus toward wellness and prevention. “Individuals must accept responsibility for their own health,” she says. “That means being willing to change to a more healthful diet, beginning an exercise program, and getting all recommended health screenings, such as, prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests, mammograms, Pap smears, cholesterol checks, and so on.”
Tali emphasizes the importance of spreading the preventive health care gospel by all providers. “Our challenge in health care is to spread the knowledge and empower individuals to seek that preventive health care, and hopefully prevent those short-term and long-term complications of chronic diseases,” she says. “Our health care system is in peril, and health care reform can only do so much. We must take responsibility for our health and act now.”
