A Model for Equity in Specialty Care: Introduction

Paying patients and indigent patients in the United States frequently have separate treatment options and receive care from separate sources and doctors, with quality and comprehensiveness that too often vary with the patient’s income. This country is in chronically short supply of publicly supported services for people who cannot pay, and even more so with specialty care than with primary care.

 

The Pacific Vision Foundation– a foundation closely affiliated with the eye department at California Pacific Medical Center– is piloting a new model of specialty clinic that is designed to be able to accept and treat paying patients and non-paying patients exactly the same: offer the same procedures, by the same doctors, under the same roof, while maintaining sustainable profit margins. 

 

While seemingly implausible in the U.S., this model, which is being developed with support from the Pioneer portfolio, has hundreds of succesful examples overseas. Over the next four days, Pioneering Ideas will feature a series of interviews with two of the project's leaders, David Roe and David Green.  

 

David Roe trained as a lawyer and has 30 years of experience in public interest strategy and environmental and human rights advocacy. David Green, an Ashoka fellow and vice-president and a recipient of a MacArthur “genius” grant, helped develop an eye care model in southern India that has been replicated in Nepal, Malawi, Egypt, Guatemala, El Salvador, Tibet, Tanzania and Kenya.

 

Visit Pioneering Ideas over the next four days to learn about what inspired the project, what needs to happen for it to work in the U.S., opportunities that might emerge through health reform, and the potential for replication in other locations and other forms of care.