10 Jul Thompson To Chair MDVIP Committee On Preventive Healthcare
Boca Raton, FL – MDVIP, Inc., named former Wisconsin Governor and U.S. Secretary of Health & Human Services Tommy Thompson as Chairman of the MDVIP Committee on Cost Reduction through Preventive Healthcare.
MDVIP is a provider of personalized healthcare made up of a network of 82 physicians in 14 states. Member physicians limit their practices to 600 patients, as opposed to the traditional primary care practice of 2,500 patients, and focus on prevention and early detection of disease.
As Chairman, Thompson will direct the development and implementation of MDVIP policy initiatives focusing on the role of preventive care in reducing national healthcare spending.
In June 2003, the New England Journal of Medicine reported that only 55 percent of recommended preventive care is administered, and only 52 percent of recommended screening is performed. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes are the leading causes of death and disability in the United States, accounting for seven of every ten deaths and affecting the quality of life of over 90 million Americans.
“It is essential that our nation reorient the delivery of primary care to prevent illness at the front end, instead of spending untold billions of dollars for treatment at the back end,” Thompson said. “Our ability to stem the dramatic growth of healthcare costs is directly related to the ability of patients to obtain, and of employers and insurers to provide, far broader preventive care options than those that exist today.”