Health care reform was designed to accomplish two major goals: extend coverage to all Americans and to improve the overall quality of health care while reducing the costs. The latter goal, improving quality while reducing costs, is something that certainly is not achievable in the manner in which we provide health care today.

We currently operate in a fragmented system where each health care provider that interacts with the patient holds themselves accountable for that one time encounter. Therefore, each encounter is a new encounter, starting all over with limited to no communication across care providers. This practice not only increases costs, but more importantly impacts quality.