Brazilian health care system

Paul Terry, PhD, is Chief Executive Officer of StayWell Health Management.

As is always the case when I return from working abroad, it takes me longer, metaphorically speaking, to unpack my bags. I was ostensibly in Brazil to teach and consult about innovations in our population health management movement in America. But, as I expected, I was surely the greater beneficiary of teachings from leaders of the wellness movement in Sao Paulo, the business nexus for the world’s sixth largest economy.

Leaders of population health programs in Sao Paulo offer a self-assessment of being a decade or more behind the United States in the maturation of employee health benefits such as employee assistance programs (EAP), disease management, pharmacy benefits management (PBM), and wellness. I anticipated we would be discussing the “leapfrog” opportunities that come with later adoption of trends. For example, developing countries garnered advantage by skipping much of the costly infrastructure of cable by embracing  wireless communications.

So I came to Brazil thinking about what aspects of American health care innovation I would skip over if I had a chance to learn from the trials and errors of America’s health reforms. Read more »