Bold statements are fairly rare from the heads of large hospital systems, but Robert Ostrowsky, the head of RWJBarnabas Health, made a pretty strong assertion in a recent interview with the Asbury Park Press: Hospitals should keep their communities healthy. But they don’t.
“It’s not easy because no one is willing to pay for that right now, meaning I don’t get reimbursed by insurance companies to keep somebody healthy and the government doesn’t seem to want to pay us to keep someone healthy,” Ostrowsky told the publication. “They all prefer to pay us when someone gets sick and they want us to spend less when that person is sick. That’s where the concentration has been. But an ounce of prevention. If they would take X number of dollars and say, ‘Here, use it to keep people healthy,’ actuarially, that will show you eventually spend less on sickness care.”
That needs to change for a variety of reasons that have begun to cascade into something profound. Princeton economist Alan Krueger has recently published a study (.pdf) showing a strong correlation between poor health and lack of workforce participation.
HENRY KOTULA 