WMU health care conference: ‘Sustaining the business of health care’

By Tess Haadsma
Western Herald

Issues surrounding the business aspect of America’s health care system were the topic of discussion at Saturday’s conference, “Sustaining the Business of Health Care in America.”

Held in Schnieder Hall’s Brown Auditorium at Western Michigan University, the conference claimed America spends $2.4 trillion on health care every year, three times the amount spent on the national defense budget, making it the largest business in the nation.

With such an economical impact, the conference addressed the topic of health care as a sustainable business, focusing on the economic vitality, environmental accountability and social responsibility of health care.

Dr. Andrew Targowski, a WMU professor of business information systems and the director of the Center for Sustainable Business Practices, served as a co-chair for the conference.

“We are speaking only from the business point of view,” Targowski said. “But it triggers questions about the medical point of view.”

The conference featured what Targowski considered to be a rare combination of speakers, as it included five physicians and only one lawyer.

“For the first time, physicians are speaking up,” Targowski said. “Physicians were not [consulted] when the health bill was designed; that bill was mostly written by lawyers and politicians.”

Included in the mix of speakers was Dr. Tom George, both a state senator of the 20th district and a medical doctor, who spoke on examining the health care reform bill passed in the United States Congress.

George said that in order for the business of health care to be sustainable, healthy lifestyles were necessary.

Every other part of the general budget has been “squeezed” in order to create more funding for health care, yet this increase in funding is not linked to results, George said.

Instead, he said the problem is that government programs aren’t encouraging healthy behavior.

“We view the health insurance card as the solution, we forget about behavioral health,” George said.

Dr. Gary Ruoff, a family practice physician at West Side Family Medical Center, as well as a co-chair for the conference, gave a lecture titled “What is Happening to the Caring Physician?”

In his presentation, Ruoff touched on how defensive medicine – performing additional tests to make sure that there is no chance of misdiagnosis – and the cost of malpractice insurance are both a huge part of why the cost of health care is increasing.

The conference also focused on the importance of primary care physicians, who are, as Targowski described it, the foundation of health care.

“Primary care physicians in Kalamazoo did not get a raise in 10 years,” Targowski said.

“Only three percent of medical students sign for family care because they cannot afford to pay off their student loans that way … if the primary care foundation disappears, the whole building of health care will fall apart.”

Also present to speak about the business of health care were U.S. Congressman Fred Upton, who offered a viewpoint from Congress, Dr. Andrew Targowski addressed “Well Being, Wisdom and Health”, Dr. John Dunn, WMU President, spoke on the topic of “The Medical School and the Revival of Kalamazoo,” while Dr. David Bauer and Mindy Richards also gave a presentation entitled “What can IT Do for Physicians?”

The events of the conference were recorded in the “2010-2011 Health Care Proceedings,” which will be sent out to libraries and decision makers all over the country, and Targowski said he hopes that such proceedings will be read and taken into consideration as well as be a good representation of what the Haworth College of Business has to offer.

“Haworth College would like to be the center for new ideas about business in our economically declining state of Michigan,” Targowski said.

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Posted by kleonard on Sep 25 2010. Filed under Breaking, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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