Joseph Antos, PhD, MA, is the Wilson H. Taylor Scholar in Health Care and Retirement Policy at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a nonpartisan public policy organization based in Washington, DC, where his research focuses on the economics of health policy. Before joining AEI, Joe was assistant director for health and human resources at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and held senior positions in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of Management and Budget, and the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. He recently completed a seven-year term as health adviser to CBO, and two terms as a commissioner of the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission. NQF spoke with Joe recently about cost, quality, and value in healthcare.
NQF: Now more than ever, why is the conversation about cost, quality, and value in healthcare so important?
JA: We’re at the intersection of tremendous technological advances in medicine and advances in healthcare delivery systems, at a time when we also have a very large population that is used to getting high-quality and technologically advanced care. This has created a world with many pressures, and we have to be more careful than ever before about how we spend our money.
NQF: What could be the single biggest change we can make for improvement in healthcare costs?
JA: We need consumers to be more understanding of what their options are, more willing to ask questions of their physicians, and more willing to take responsibility for their own health and activities. This inevitably is happening, as consumers increasingly take charge of their health and healthcare and as electronic communication continues to grow.
NQF: What is the unique role that NQF can play in better aligning cost and quality?
JA: As public and private programs move to tie payments to performance, measuring true performance is critical. NQF’s central goal is to endorse measures that are practical and that capture how healthcare affects patients, both positively and negatively. NQF also promotes critical public-private collaboration in voluntary initiatives, bringing people together who truly want to see improvement.