A new paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research explores whether increased cost-sharing in health care coverage has affected the productivity of employees subject to this greater out-of-pocket spending…
Read More
Research published in the Annals of Internal Medicine examines the effects of allowing patients to read the notes written by physicians about their health and care. Patients generally seem to…
Read More
An article and accompanying editorial in the Annals of Internal Medicine discuss the effect of non-payment for hospital-acquired catheter-linked urinary tract infections, finding that the underlying data is likely so…
Read More
Another luminescent Potpourri, focusing on the ACA's high-risk pool plan; controlling health spending in Massachusetts; what components of EHRs and HIEs may control costs; another survey of employers and dealing…
Read More
An Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality report looks at the evidence for the effectiveness of public reporting of providers' performance on various quality measures in actually creating quality improvements…
Read More
The Employee Benefit Research Institute releases a report looking at private health insurance exchanges and defined contribution plans, putting them in historical perspective and suggesting that adoption of these initiatives…
Read More
An interesting paper from the National Bureau of Economics focuses on moral hazard in health insurance and more specifically the extent to which consumers anticipation of future spending affects utilization,…
Read More
Medication adherence is a widespread problem in health care, ranging from failure to even pick up a prescription to failure to follow instructions on when and how to use the…
Read More
Our first Potpourri in a while is as diverse and flamboyant as the fall colors, including items on the effectiveness of telemonitoring, the history of health "reform" in the United…
Read More
Physicians still largely control the levers of the health care system. Their perceptions of the system and their role in it therefore carry outsized importance. A detail survey by The…
Read More
The Physician Group Practice Demonstration conducted by Medicare has largely wrapped up , to be supplanted by the accountable care organization programs. The PGP demo appears to have led to…
Read More
The Health Care Cost Institute releases a report on spending and utilization in the employer-based health care coverage market for 2011. Spending continues to rise faster than inflation or economic…
Read More
The Center for Public Integrity has pointed out what was an obvious unintended consequence of greater use of electronic health records--providers will use the additional clinical information to feed billing…
Read More
Yet another report on hospital readmission work, this one from the Northeast Business Group on Health. Basically a puff piece full of obvious recommendations and bland nostrums, it purports to…
Read More
Bundled payments are designed to change the incentives for providers so that they manage patient care in a more cost-effective manner, hopefully without negatively affecting quality. A report from the…
Read More
About this Blog
The Healthy Skeptic is a website about the health care system, and is written by Kevin Roche, who has many years of experience working in the health industry. Mr. Roche is available to assist health care companies through consulting arrangements through Roche Consulting, LLC and may be reached at khroche@healthy-skeptic.com.