The true strength of our healthcare system is its people

By Seema Verma, Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

As a wife and mother, my family’s health is always foremost on my mind. That is why a recent personal experience will forever shape the impact I want to have while serving as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Earlier this month, while at an airport with our two children, my husband collapsed and went into cardiac arrest. He’s home now and his prognosis is excellent. However, if it weren’t for the courageous bystanders who administered CPR and the dedicated medical professionals at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania where he was admitted, he wouldn’t be with us today.

I wasn’t at the airport when my husband collapsed. I arrived at the hospital as soon as I could, and as I met the team of professionals who were caring for him, I was amazed by their skill and compassion. From the hospital administrators to the physicians, nurses, and many others who took charge of his care, I witnessed the true greatness of our healthcare system: the remarkable people who serve within it.

My life would be very different if it weren’t for the diligence and expertise of the first responders at the airport and the healthcare professionals at the hospital. Even in our age of advanced technology, procedures, and therapies, it’s the people that make our healthcare system one that we feel we can entrust with the care of our loved ones.

My husband is a physician, and I have many relatives and close friends who are healthcare professionals as well.  To a person these caregivers are some of the smartest and most selfless people I know. They have put in long hours and made many sacrifices along the path of medical education and training. What motivates them isn’t a promise of high salaries, or a quest for esteem, but a genuine drive to help patients and their families when they are most vulnerable.

Our healthcare system is made up of a community of professionals who want to do good.  As a wife and a mother I am so grateful for this, because these professionals saved my husband and my children’s father. As the Administrator of CMS, I am inspired by this and feel compelled to do everything I can to support these caregivers. Our agency must make it easier for them to focus on doing the work that patients and families need them to do without causing them to be subject to excessive regulatory and administrative burden.

That’s why in all of our recent proposed rules, CMS has asked healthcare providers for their thoughts on how to simplify our regulations. And over the next few months we will be announcing additional initiatives to ease the burden our government places on healthcare providers. We will continue to engage with our providers on their concerns.

Some regulations are necessary in order to ensure patient safety and well-being, and to protect the integrity of federal health care programs.  However, over the past few years, regulations have tilted more towards creating burdens than towards serving as a safeguard for the programs.  This shift is now having a negative impact on patient care, hindering innovation, and increasing healthcare costs.

To make sure we are addressing the actual pain points that doctors feel, we are visiting them where they work, listening to their stories about the challenges they face, and bringing those lessons back to CMS. We have heard time and again that documentation for payment and for quality reporting is unnecessarily time-consuming and keeps clinicians working late into the night just to keep up on paperwork. Electronic health records that were supposed to make providers’ lives easier by freeing up more time to spend on patient care have distanced them from their patients. New payment structures that were meant to increase coordination have added yet another layer of rules and requirements.

No one went into medicine to become a paperwork expert. We are listening, integrating the feedback we hear into our work at CMS, and making changes that will make it easier for doctors, nurses, and other clinicians to do what they entered medicine to do: take care of those in need.

It can be easy to forget how important our healthcare system is, to forget that every day, men and women are hard at work treating, comforting, and healing. For those of us whose families have received lifesaving care, we are forever grateful. The entire CMS team and I are committed to doing our part to make sure that these caring professionals can do their job without the burden of unnecessary regulation.