Can all the public reporting on provider quality and cost performance actually be used by consumers to make good choices for their health care services? That is the question explored in a Health Affairs study and the research gives a positive answer.
A new study published in Health Affairs looks at one of the claimed benefits for broader use of health information technology, that it will reduce redundant test ordering, and finds that it appears to have the opposite effect. Once again, it pays to be very leery about the remedial claims of all these great new health care advances.
Years after it was initially predicted to do so, medical care based on individual genetic findings is becoming more pervasive. A new report from UnitedHealth Group examines trends and impacts over the next few years from this more personalized version of medicine.
With the advent of the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services hospital readmission penalty program, hospitals are scrambling to try to identify potential readmissions and manage them. A new Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality report gives some basic data on hospital readmissions for chronic and acute conditions.
Specialty drug costs are growing very rapidly and in a few years may constitute half of all pharmaceutical spending. A new report from the Pharmacy Benefit Management Institute highlights trends in utilization and costs in this health care category.
Another outstanding collection of summaries from the health research literature, including this week, physicians’ difficulty in understanding the benefits of screening tests, physicians’ feelings about health information technology, AARP’s latest report on prices paid by seniors for commonly used drugs, the real cost of health reform, variation in outcomes and costs of knee replacements and shared decision-making in two common clinical situations.
One of the causes of rapid health spending growth is the aging of our population. A new report from the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality reviews the literature on home and community-based care for the elderly versus institutional care in nursing homes.
A report from the International Federation of Health Plans compares prices for some common services and drugs across several developed countries. In all categories, physician services, hospital care and drugs, the United States pays average commercial plan prices that are much higher than any other country for almost every service.
Wellness programs are popular among employers and payers because of a perception that they can reduce health care spending, at least in the long run. A new study published in the Population Health Management journal tests whether such programs can lead to an enhanced sense of overall well-being among particpants.
A small percent of the population accounts for a large percent of overall health spending. These people have often had difficulty getting health insurance and the reform law fixes that, but at a cost which is apparently far higher than what was originally projected by the Administration, according to its own analysis.
Its March and spring nears; our Potpourri blooms with nuggets of health care information, including comparative regulation of medical devices in the US and Europe, do physicians always truthful with patients, CMS’ oversight of home health care agencies, the validity of a CMS’ measure of ER scanning, and patient-centered care.
The CMS program to reduce, or at least penalize hospitals for, unnecessary readmissions is in full swing this year. A new study looks at how Medicare Advantage plans do in regard to readmissions for their beneficiaries and compares this performance to that for fee-for-service beneficiaries.
According to a new report from Thomson Reuters, $36 billion a year could be saved in health care spending if provider prices were more transparent to consumers. There is a little faulty reasoning in the report, but there is no doubt that it is extremely difficult for consumers to find, understand and compare the price of health care.
Yet another missive for the debate on the sources of variation in health spending, this time from the Center for Studying Health System Change, which looked at autoworker claims across the country, finding that people’s health status and hospital prices were the major factor in geographic spending differences.
One of the hot new concepts is use of “medical home” physician practices to improve quality and lower costs. A study from Health Affairs suggests that practices having medical home characteristics don’t necessarily do better in producing good outcomes for outpatients.
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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