In this first in a series of conferences focusing on healthcare issues, Fiona Godlee, editor of the British Medical Journal, chairs a discussion of the roles of patients and physicians in healthcare reform, with Angela Coulter, director of global initiatives at the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making, and Richard Smith, director of the UnitedHealth Chronic Disease Initiative.
This 474th Salzburg Global Seminar session entitled, "Reforming Health Care: Maintaining Social Solidarity and Quality in the Face of Economic, Health and Social Challenges", brought together 55 participants from 28 countries, including physicians, policy makers, administrators, journalists, scholars, and others.
They met in the historic Schloss Leopoldskron, in Salzburg, Austria, and discussed a wide range of topics related to reforming healthcare. The second in the series was held in December, focusing on the patients' role and shared decision making; and the third conference will be held in September 2011, on innovation in health and healthcare.
Topics addressed in this video include:
* Patients as a key element on the demand side bringing about healthcare systems reform, as healthcare literacy improves, as patient expectations grow, and as engagement with patients in medical decision making becomes more regular practice
* Physicians as tending to be expert in dealing with individual patients, less expert in institutional matters, and not comfortable at all in systems thinking.
* The question then being whether this can change and physicians can come to play more of a role in systems reform.
Bio
Angela Coulter
Angela Coulter is director of global initiatives at the Foundation for Informed Medical Decision Making. She is also a non-executive director
of the Nuffield Orthopaedic NHS Trust in Oxford, and a trustee of National Voices. Previous roles included chief executive of Picker Institute Europe, executive director of policy and development at the King's Fund, and director of the Health Services Research Unit at the University of Oxford. She has published more than 250 research papers, reports and books.
A social scientist by training, Dr. Coulter received a doctorate in health services research from the University of London. She holds honorary fellowships at the Faculty of Public Health and the Royal College of General Practitioners.
Fiona Godlee
Fiona Godlee has served as the editor in chief of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) since 2005. She qualified as a doctor in 1985 and trained as a general physician in Cambridge and London. Since joining the BMJ in 1990, she has written on a broad range of issues including the impact of environmental degradation on health, the future of the World Health Organization and the ethics of academic publication.
In 1994, she spent a year at Harvard University as a Harkness Fellow. On returning to the UK, Dr. Godlee led the development of BMJ Clinical Evidence. In 2000, she worked at the Current Science Group to establish the open access online publisher BioMed Central as editorial director for medicine. In 2003, she returned to the BMJ Group to head up its new Knowledge Division.
Richard Smith
Richard Smith is director of the UnitedHealth Chronic Disease Initiative, Minneapolis, USA, which collaborates on a global program with the
National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. The program aims at creating centers in the developing world to counter the pandemic of chronic disease.
Having qualified in medicine in Edinburgh, he began his career working in hospitals in Scotland and New Zealand. He also worked for six years as a television doctor with the BBC and TV-AM. For thirteen years he held the position of editor for the British Medical Journal, and served as chief executive of the BMJ Publishing Group. He also served as chief executive of UnitedHealth Europe.
Dr. Smith has a degree in management science from Stanford Business School, California, USA.
Public-health agency of the UN, established in Geneva in 1948 to succeed two earlier agencies. Its mandate is to promote “the highest possible level of health” in all peoples. Its work falls into three categories. It provides a clearinghouse for information on the latest developments in disease and health care and establishes international sanitary standards and quarantine measures. It sponsors measures for the control of epidemic and endemic disease (including immunization campaigns and assistance in providing sources of pure water). Finally, it encourages the strengthening of public-health programs in member nations. Its greatest success to date has been the worldwide eradication of smallpox (1980).
member. 
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