Japan: A glimpse at Montana's future?

Maryland's health care system is based on three pillars – all-payer rate setting, a global budget, and total cost of care – that, together, have shown positive results both for the patients and for the state's hospitals. Although evidence of success with regard to health care costs is limited, the model of incentiving investment in community health and preventive care has shown success in reducing readmission rates for hospitals across the state.

A man named Greg Jefferys runs a sort of online buyers club for the life-saving oral treatment for Hepatitis C. There are myriad reasons why patients are unable to obtain the drugs on their own, a few being high costs imposed by the pharmaceutical companies, and lack of governmental approval for the drug. Jefferys charges a $200 fee to get patients the 12-week course of oral pills from India that cure Hepatitis C completely.

Hidalgo Medical Services is a nonprofit public health clinic that has set out to develop a model for delivering quality, affordable health care to rural communities through a comprehensive approach that addresses multiple patient needs at once.

Health insurance sign-ups made available to all inmates at the San Francisco county jail, partnered with guidance from a clinic once they are on the outside, allows them to receive better care upon release, and may help prevent a return to crime and substance abuse.

Rural hospitals across the country often struggle to stay open in states where Medicaid has not been expanded, but a method known as "swing beds" has helped two critical-access hospitals in Georgia to avoid this fate. This method, which allows hospitals to swing beds from "only patients in need of acute care to those who no longer require the emergency department but still needed more treatment before a nursing home," allowed for the hospitals to pay off debt and expand services.

Health care in the Netherlands relies heavily on the collaboration, cooperation, and shared responsibility between private markets and government regulations to achieve affordable, consistent, and quality care for patients. Although the system is not without its limitations, this process has helped the country avoid preventable deaths while also guaranting nearly all residents insurance.

The Alzheimer’s and Dementia Care program at UCLA in California is offering a new kind of patient-centered care that has helped bring relief to families in the region. The program, which creates a care plan "that builds in medical needs, solutions for caregiver stress and cultural traditions unique to each person and their family," has resulted in decreased stress and symptoms for patients and increased confidence and support for caregivers.

Unlike other states, Connecticut is running their own medicaid program. The state is reducing costs by reaching out to people before they get severely sick. They’re using their extensive medicaid data, looking for people who face a greater risk of getting a disease, reaching out to them, and connecting them with preventative care. “The state’s per-patient spending on Medicaid dropped by an average of 5.7 percent each year between 2010 and 2014.”

While American medicine tops the charts for "acute care," it's notably sub-par when it comes to treating chronic conditions and focusing on prevention. This piece introduces a series on how the U.S. healthcare system's structure results in high expenses and inefficient treatments, and what various programs around the nation are doing to improve quality of care at lower costs.

Doctors at Stanford University developed per-patient and per-month payment plans to better support patients with complex medical needs. The approach upends the typical per-service payment model. It has radically improved primary care by incentivizing healthcare providers to offer more comprehensive support.