In a preceding editorial,1 that appeared in the February 1990 issue of the Archives, I talked about health care costs in general and specifically about ophthalmologic costs. That editorial surveyed previous attempts to control rising health care costs, what was likely to happen in the future, and how we could intervene by forming a partnership with the federal government and third-party payers to contain ophthalmic costs with our patients' best interests in mind. A scheme was proposed to organize ophthalmologic care into small local groups to control procedure abuse and weed out poor-quality clinical care. The preceding editorial focused primarily on the mechanics of forming the partnership and weeding out the procedure abusers. This editorial focuses on defining and establishing high-quality ophthalmic health care through the partnership with third-party payers and the federal government.
Last year, William Roper, MD, then administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration, and coauthors