We had our well-attended event on Health CEOs for Health Care Reform Friday. We'll post a video summary and more details soon, but we have one point we want to make right now:

A lot of people in Washington (and on certain op-ed pages around the country) are talking about health care delivery reform as though it were a theoretical construct taken from an academic journal, as though we aren't really sure what it is or what it can be or whether it can happen in the real world.

In fact it is already happening in the real world. And these CEOs are part of what's happening out there—high quality patient-centered care. 

 At less cost. For as OMB director Peter Orszag said on his blog, we know how to achieve real savings, not "speculative" savings.

In big ways and small, forward-looking health care organizations like the Health CEOs for Health Reform (and they aren't the only ones) are showing us what's possible. They are moving away from silos of disconnected specialty care, and toward integrated, coordinated care that works for patients in and out of the hospital. They are employing health IT in ways that advance the quality of care, reduce errors and help doctors and patients manage chronic conditions together.

They are setting standards of excellence and holding themselves to them. Or as Nancy-Ann DeParle, head of the White House Office of Health Reform, said as she introduced the event, they are putting their money where their mouths are, identifying hundreds of billions of savings that are achievable over the next 10 years.

Leaders in health care want to be freed from the anachronisms and restrictions of the current fee-for-service payment system. Instead of being paid for this service and that, they want to be paid for taking care of the whole patient. Instead of responding to emergencies, they want to prevent them.

Nobody yet has all the answers. But these health executives do have some of them. And they know what direction to go in to find more. We outlined their key recommendations last Friday—-and you can dig down more here (summary) and here (full white paper) to learn more about their specific ideas on risk-sharing or bundling or advanced planning. But the main point is that they are moving ahead with a coordinated strategy of innovation that saves money and improves care. And the rest of us can and should learn from their example.  As Mike Johnson, senior public policy adviser for Blue Shield of California said, "If we start paying for quality, we'll get quality."