How many people will enroll in the coverage offered via the reform law in 2014 either in Medicaid or commercial coverage? A new paper based on survey work suggests it will be a very high number of the uninsured, but there are several flaws in the reasoning and data.
The Annals of Internal Medicine carries a study on the effectiveness of interventions to reduce the 30-day readmissions rate. This meta-review found little consistent evidence to support the value of any particular intervention, which should give further pause to the notion that most readmissions could be avoided or that hospitals should be penalized when they can’t be told how to reliably reduce readmissions.
No Potpourri next week due to the holiday, so enjoy this festive collection of health care nuggets, including pay-for-performance in large physician groups, employer views on the effect of the reform law, the effect of physician financial interest in cardiac testing, experience with high deductible plans, medical homes and quality improvement and for-profit and non-for-profit hospital treatment of the uninsured.
A Mark Farrah Associates release provides information on the enrollment and margin status of the largest health insurers. The data suggest that enrollment has begun to grow again, with self-funded commercial members accounting for most of that growth.
A final summary of Medicare’s disease management pilots gives a bleak picture of the value of the efforts. While there are design and methodological critiques of the Medicare program that may make the results not generalizable, the outcomes do suggest that if disease management is to show value, design and execution need to be improved.
Massachusetts Special Commission on Provider Price Reform has released its momentous report on how to address the surging health care costs in the state, which appear to be largely caused by “excessive” provider prices and price increases. Someday regulators might learn that the more you regulate, the more you regulate.
Drug manufacturers have a new trick up their sleeve to get consumers to use their expensive branded products instead of cheaper alternatives–copay coupon programs. These programs significantly raise spending with no offsetting gain in quality or other benefits. Unfortunately, regulation is probably needed to ban the programs.
The cold is approaching so curl up on the sofa and enjoy the warmth of our Potpourri, this week featuring results from a pay-for-performance program, the effect of the health insurance tax on premiums and employment, the evidence for a stroke treatment, collaborative care for heart disease and physicians views on their practices and health information tools.
It stands to reason that a care transition program will improve outcomes in regard to hospitalized stroke and heart attack patients, but an AHRQ research review finds little solid evidence that this is the case for most types of care transition interventions.
The latest Towers Watson survey of employer intentions regarding health benefits indicates that significant changes may occur in the next two to three years, but the biggest danger may be firms’ willingness to play follow-the-leader when it comes to reactions to reform.
Research reported in Health Affairs examines the Mayo Clinic’s experience after increasing cost-sharing for its employees. Reductions in the use of many discretionary services seem to have been sustained over a multi-year period, leading to overall spending restraint.
A significant trend affecting all of health care in the last decade is consumerism, specifically the effort to engage consumers in managing their health and health care and to make care more patient-centered. A new report from GAO shows how hard these efforts can be when data, in this case data on provider prices, is hard to obtain and give to consumers.
Winter nears but our Potpourri will distract you from the cold breezes, providing compelling nuggets on prostate screening recommendations, consumer use of technology for health, insurer medical cost trends, what to do about Medicare’s physician payments, heart failure hospitalization and mortality rates and rates of non-filling of new prescriptions.
The world’s aflame with reporting on provider quality and cost performance. Making sure the information is complete, accurate and credible is no simple task, as a recent Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality report demonstrates.
From the Commonwealth Fund comes another in a series of reports bemoaning the woeful inadequacy of the American health system, especially compared to those in other developed countries. Whatever our faults, this type of analysis is filled with its own flaws and provides little useful guidance for addressing our issues.
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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