Thursday, December 11, 2008

Health insurance exec calls for fewer c-sections

Check out this terrific opinion piece in the New Jersey Times--"Pre-term Cesarean Birth," by Michael McGuire, CEO of United Health Care of New Jersey. I love it. Especially his concluding paragraphs:
"There is a broader principle at work here, and it's called evidence-based medicine. . . . If health-care insurance companies and medical caregivers work together, we can identify from real-world evidence the best practices for a wide variety of medical conditions. As we can see in the case of early elective C-Sections, using evidence-based guidelines in medical care will lead to healthier outcomes for patients.

"And it's a funny thing about health care: Virtually everything that makes people healthier, be it preventive care or evidence-based guidelines, reduces the overall cost of providing health care, because it leads to healthier people, including babies, who use fewer health-care resources."

Like midwifery care! Hmm... evidence-based medicine... what a novel idea! ;-)

2 comments:

emily said...

hi. found your fabulous site from a friend of a friend's blog. i wanted to recommend to you *Ina May's Guide to Childbirth* by Ina May Gaskin--it's so wonderful. I'm looking to reading a few from your sidebar that I haven't gotten to yet. thanks for this blog--what a great resource!

Lani said...

Thanks for stopping by, Emily! I've read Ina May's Guide... great book! I should add it to my sidebar! Thanks for commenting! Can't wait to hear from you again. :-)