We, among many others, have been harsh critics of Medicare’s misguided hospital readmissions penalty program, which begins this year. MedPAC has weighed in with its views on how to “refine” the program, but its recommendations will only exacerbate the flaws in the current regulations.
The Kaiser Family Foundation published its annual survey on Employer Health Benefits. While the rate of growth in both single and family health insurance premiums has slowed, it is still well above inflation, wage growth or GDP growth and while employee cost-sharing is relatively flat, the amount spent on health insurance by the average employee continues to grow far faster than income.
Another brilliant edition of our Potpourri, focusing on individual health insurance rate reform, variation in traumatic care costs, genetic counseling and diabetes, small business and health care costs and savings from wellness programs.
Research based on data from UnitedHealth Group’s commercial health plans finds wide variation in episode of care costs across both selected procedures and chronic diseases. The research also showed that for care provided by physicians meeting certain quality and efficiency benchmarks, episode of care costs were generally lower than for care provided by other physicians.
The Employee Benefit Research Institute has released a survey on consumers attitudes toward their health care coverage. Among three types of coverage, traditional, high deductible with no savings account and high deductible with a savings account, enrollees in high-deductible plans had similar overall levels of satisfaction to those in traditional plans, but greater dissatisfaction relating to cost-sharing.
A study released by a private vendor evaluates wellness and benefit administration benchmarks in 2012.
The Institute of Medicine released a report regarding supposed unnecessary spending on health care in the United States and potential ways to remedy that problem, largely through use of health information technology.
With all the federal incentive money sloshing around, the health information technology market, especially for electronic medical records, has understandably been hot and there are many competitors all seeking revenue from that market. A recent Medscape survey identifies which EHR vendors seem to be making the most progress.
A survey from Revive Health examined hospital perceptions of payers, and other issues. Wellpoint is rated worst, many independent Blue Cross plans do poorly as well and UnitedHealth Group, while not highly ranked, is showing improvement. Hospitals are pessimistic about reform but undertaking a number of incented initiatives like ACOs and greater use of HIT.
Are financial incentives for providers a good thing? A review in the British Medical Journal examines when financial incentives can be helpful in improving care and when they might actually lead to worse outcomes. The authors created a checklist designed to provide easy guidance on design and implementation of pay for performance type programs.
A report from the Centers for Disease Control updates information on rates of electronic health record adoption. Given the incentives from the federal government, adoption seems surprisingly slow and meaningful use lags even further behind. Most doctors report being satisfied with their system.
AONHewitt has released its 2012 Health Care Survey, which largely reviews employer attitudes and actions toward health care coverage. The impacts of the health reform law are obviously foremost on companies’ agendas, with cost increases being the biggest challenge and one that is really unaddressed by the reform law.
Yet another brilliant collection of health care data points, including use of gene profiling tests to guide breast cancer care, 30-day mortality models for stroke performance, hospital medication administration errors, the costs of the Medicare physician payment fix and patient-sharing networks among physicians.
The first year of experience with Medicare’s readmission program is in and Kaiser has done an initial analysis of the results. A large number of hospitals will be penalized, mostly those who can least afford it, and the program continues to show how poorly designed it is and what severe unintended consequences will ensue from its implementation.
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 [email protected].
© 2024 Healthy Skeptic.
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