America’s $3 trillion healthcare system is undergoing its most tumultuous changes in a half century. Although covering the uninsured and the individual mandate to purchase insurance has received the most attention, these are not the most important developments driving change. Rather, it is the rapidly accelerating movement from a volume to a value based healthcare financing system that will be most responsible for creating a very different healthcare industry by the end of this decade. Unsustainable cost pressures have been mounting on the government and employers as the ultimate purchasers of healthcare. Left unabated, these forces will render our nation economically destitute and our companies globally uncompetitive in the years and decades ahead. Although the Great Recession provided a five year respite, with the growing economic recovery and the addition of millions of previously uninsured to the marketplace, healthcare cost increases are returning. What can be done to prevent a return to double-digit healthcare inflation in a national economy, business and consumer environment that can no longer sustain that? The Quadruple Aim is a one goal enhancement (i.e. decreasing medical liability) to that of the better known Triple Aim , which seeks better care, improved individual and population health and lower costs. The Triple Aim has served as the North Star toward which all reform efforts at least should be pointed. But can achievement of the Triple Aim also result in accomplishing the Quadruple Aim (simultaneously decreasing the risks and actualities of medical liability)? Conversely, what will likely be the enduring value of achieving the Triple Aim if accomplishing the Quadruple Aim is not possible? The overarching theme of this book addresses those questions in the context of a technology-driven, rapidly transforming healthcare industry.
