The meaningful use provisions of the stimulus bill provide incentive payments to providers who implement EMRs, and ultimately penalties for those who don’t or who don’t use those systems in certain ways. A pair of new briefs outline challenges for providers to meet the meaningful use requirements.
Not much is hotter in health care than wireless/mobile functionality and how it may affect many aspects of care delivery and health management. A PWC report looks at trends, opportunities and challenges.
The Kaiser Foundation released results of its annual survey of health insurance costs among companies providing health benefits to workers. The most prominent finding is the continued shift of cost to employees.
The Office of Actuary publishes its current estimate of national health spending in the wake of health reform. It finds that the law will slightly increase spending, but there is a big caveat because the projections assume Medicare payment cuts will stay in place.
Fall is a lovely time of year and what could be better than relaxing with a Potpourri, featuring health insurance increases, the true costs of EHRs, hospital pay-for-performance programs and quality, the impact of social networks on health behavior, and unenrolled Medicaid-eligible children.
Deloitte’s annual survey of consumers in six countries on health care issues provides some interesting insights on the citizens’ health behaviors, concerns and perceptions of their health system.
Fears have been expressed that increasing CDHP enrollment puts people at risk for skipping necessary health services. The GAO looked at this population and found healthier people enrolled and they spent less after enrollment than non-CDHP members.
Research shows that allowing nurse anesthetists to do their jobs without physician supervision does not pose additional risk to patients. Regulations and laws which limit this ability should therefore be eliminated.
A new study of the association between process of care measures and health outcomes for certain hospital episodes has encouraging results for pay for reporting and pay for performance programs.
We have certainly labored over the Labor Day weekend version of the Potpourri, featuring relative performance of US and foreign medical school graduates, California health insurance hikes, non-for-profit hospital CEO pay, performance measures and outcome variation at hospitals related to cost, new reimbursement methods and physician cost profiling.
A Commonwealth Foundation Brief describes a “virtual ward” model developed in Great Britain to minimize hospitalizations for chronic disease patients. Early results are encouraging and similar models are being tried in the United States.
Medicaid programs, and other third-party payers, can save a lot of money by requiring use of generics when available. Some state laws, however, can significantly inhibit generic use, according to new research in Health Affairs.
Deloitte puts out an Issue Brief touting the mobile personal health record as a key to reducing costs, primarily by better chronic condition management. There are a lot of barriers from vision to reality.
The new health law attempts to dictate how much of insurance premiums insurers must spend on medical care, so of course there is now extensive haggling on defining the calculation. The NAIC has released its version, which now goes to HHS for review.
A study of a medical home model indicates reductions in hospital admissions and readmissions and possibly a reduction in total spending. It is not clear, however, what the full economic impact was nor is it clear that most practices would see the results that this particular provider system did.
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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