Reducing health care costs: You can’t improve what you don’t measure

How can we fix the U.S. health care system so that it is both less costly and provides better patient outcomes? It’s a complicated question with no easy answer. One solution is to invest more in high quality primary care, with an emphasis on continuity of care that fosters a partnership between providers and patients. Chris Koller, president of the Milbank Memorial Fund, shares how the organization is working with public officials to improve the health of all populations and their work with states to set health care cost growth targets.

As quality gurus tell us all the time, you can’t improve what you don’t measure. We measure unemployment, we measure economic growth, we should be measuring our health care costs. That’s what this effort is about.

Chris Koller, president, Milbank Memorial Fund