The Alliance for Home Health Quality and Innovation sponsored a useful report on characteristics of home health care and other post-acute care services by Medicare beneficiaries, with a focus on those surrounding hospital readmissions, a significant current issue for hospitals.
Imaging has been a poster boy for alleged excessive and inappropriate utilization, resulting in higher than necessary spending. A study reported in Health Affairs finds that, for Medicare and commercial insurers, imaging growth has slowed, and the researchers explore why this may be so.
Deloitte surveyed a number of employers for their views on the US health care system. Most feel the system needs substantial improvement, particularly in regard to costs and most view the Affordable Care Act as a bad start to fixing the problems.
Patient and family engagement in health and managing health care is a necessary condition to seeing real improvement in our health system. A report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality looks at various techniques for creating such engagement in regard to hospital care.
At the height of the summer, with dryness across the land, there is no drought of information in our Potpourri, this week including use of an interactive health record to increase preventive care, Medicare and Medicaid geographical variation, shared decision-making, readmissions for heart attacks and Japan’s all-payer rate setting system.
Patient satisfaction and patient-centered care are two health care movements which are being incented and rewarded by various government and private payer programs, but a Perspective in the Journal of the American Medical Association points out that these concepts may not lead to the most desirable outcomes.
Federally qualified community health centers are a lynchpin to providing accessible health care for lower income Americans. Two recent reports discuss quality and cost issues at these centers and indicate that they are a very good option for care.
Medication errors figure prominently in health care spending, and errors after hospital discharge are a cause of readmissions. Recently reported research examined whether an intervention by clinical pharmacists could reduce such errors.
Hospital costs are the major contributor to national health spending growth. A report from the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy examines executive compensation at the state’s non-profit hospitals, which is quite substantial and bears no relation to quality.
Our Potpourri finally returns, including items on duplicate payments in federal health programs, EHR use and malpractice claims, venture capital statistics, consumer use of online self-service applications, and a new statistical method for predictive modeling.
The British Medical Informations and Decision Making Journal carries research comparing traditional and virtual consulations. Patient satisfaction is equivalent across the two methods and doctors are also accepting of virtual visits.
No matter how controversial they may be, consumer-directed health plans with their higher cost-sharing continue to spread rapidly. A Rand Corporation brief examines the evidence on the effect of these plans on the cost and use of health care.
IMS has a tremendous amount of information on prescription drug use and their reports are always worth paying attention to. The latest provides their outlook through 2016, finding steady increases in overall global spending, with less on brand names and more on generic.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation summarizes and follows up research on the contribution of hospitals to spending increases and in particular the effects of hospital consolidation. Not good news for hospitals, especially large systems in non-competitive areas.
Deloitte publishes its fifth annual survey of consumers on the performance of the American health system and the effects of health reform. The health reform law isn’t positively viewed, but people seem satisfied with their own care.
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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