James Maskell. Optimize Patients with Chronic Diseases for Surgery: Could the Group Medical Visit Model Help?
Medical economist James Maskell applies the principle of maximizing the marginal benefit of an intervention in his quest to help reduce health care expenditures. To this end, he focuses on strategies for reducing chronic disease not only because it accounts for the majority of health care dollars spent but also because this burden contributes to clinician overwhelm due to patient volume and the limited efficacy of many current therapies and their adoption. His ability to think outside the box and passion for working to solve big problems make him an ideal conversation partner for Sound Medicine Podcast. We explore his ideas about distinguishing the care of acute from chronic disease, leveraging the healing dimensions of connection by moving some care into a group medical visit model, and the challenges of reframing the closely held value of the one-to-one doctor-patient relationship and how we think about confidentiality in a world where the negotiation of privacy is utterly transformed. In the surgical realm, connecting patients with each other as they prepare for elective surgery, complete anesthesia preoperative visits, learn about postoperative milestones, enhanced recovery pathways, what to expect in the operating room and hospital, and navigate the return home and recovery could be game changers for them and for us. In the surgical realm, connecting patients with each other as they prepare for elective surgery, complete anesthesia preoperative visits, learn about postoperative milestones, enhanced recovery pathways, what to expect in the operating room and hospital, and navigate the return home and recovery could be game changers for them and for us.
Visionary healthcare economist James Maskell had an unconventional upbringing in an intentional community where his earliest medical care was provided by complementary medicine providers. As a young adult, he sought a more mainstream life, studying economics and pursuing a career in investment banking until he discovered his need for a more values-driven focus in his work. Now on a mission to flatten the curve of healthcare costs, James Maskell has spent the past decade innovating at the cross section of functional medicine and community. To that end, he created the Functional Forum, the world’s largest integrative medicine conference with record-setting participation online and growing physician communities around the world. His organization and best selling book of the same name, Evolution of Medicine, prepares health professionals for this new era of personalized, participatory medicine.
His new project, FindFunctional, makes functional medicine affordable and accessible for all by using the power of community to help treat chronic disease, which accounts for the majority of health care expenditures. How and why to use group visits is the subject of his second book, The Community Cure: Transforming Health Outcomes. There is a free audio download for physicians here.
James lives in Sacramento, CA with his wife and daughter.
You can reach him at james@findfunctional.com or link to his TEDx talk to learn more.
