We want to help. The mission of our organization is to create awareness about these healthcare challenges through education and grassroots activities. Our long-term goal is to help reduce overall costs to the U.S. healthcare system.

We believe a major flaw in today's healthcare system is the overall reimbursement "philosophy" created over the past several years. It's basically become outdated.

Unfortunately, physicians are paid solely on the volume of patients they see and the number of services they render - not on quality care they provide and their positive outcomes. Additionally, many physicians rely upon ancillary services (including radiology, laboratory, and pharmaceutical) to supplement their income. We advocate for the appropriate reimbursement of cognitive services rather than ancillary services, including treatment planning, chronic care management, coordination of care, and physician supervision. We believe that both physicians and insurers undervalue the complexity of care rendered by the physicians and their staff. It is vital that we educate physicians on how to capture their complexity of care through their documentation and billing processes and educate the insurers on the true value of the care rendered.

We embrace the concept of value-based purchasing by insurers for their beneficiaries. Value can be demonstrated by following standards-based care (or deviating from that care when medically appropriate), by assuming accountability for the cost of treatment, and by documenting the multiple positive patient outcomes. Payment for cognitive services, rather than payment for ancillary services or payment for volume of services, will result in the best care for our patients as well as the best value for the healthcare dollar.

The last time you went to see your doctor, do you recall how much time he or she spent with you? If it was your first appointment, chances are good it may have been up to one hour - if you were lucky. If it was a return visit, however, it was probably more like 10 minutes. That gives patients hardly any time to ask questions and discuss problems they have. Here's another challenge. If you're an older American, you're probably seeing more than one or two specialists. If so, who is coordinating the communications and care among those physicians on your behalf? Maybe nobody - because doctors are not paid or incentivized to do that.

This is what our reimbursement system is forcing physicians to do. Get patients in and out the door as quickly as possible. This philosophy does nothing for the well-being of the patient.

We believe the system would work better and more effectively if physicians were simply reimbursed for what they do best — reward them for their "cognitive" activities. Don't reward them to order tests. If this idea was embraced, what are the potential benefits? We believe:

Please join us in our efforts to change the healthcare system. We want to increase quality of care, and at the same time, reduce overall healthcare costs.