Patricia Gabow Comments

摘要

American health care costs too much and delivers too little. Hospitals contribute to this problem, but the problems do not emanate primarily from hospitals lacking public health value—a possibility Michael Fine (p. 453) asks us to consider. Let us look through the World Health Organization definition of health as a “state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.1 In aggregate, health care contributes 10% to 15% and the social determinants 50% to health. No part of the health care system alone or in combination can deliver population health. The central questions focus on hospitals’ contribution to health care and social care and their role in linking the two.