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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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…
Read More
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.…
Read More
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…
Read More
Summer nears an end, but not our Potpourris. This one includes the costs of malpractice, an innovative provider error disclosure program, employer wellness paybacks, blood pressure medication issues, the cost…
Read More
Everyone is anxious to see the early effects of the reform law on health care costs. Another survey of large employer groups regarding their 2010 and 2011 expectations indicates that…
Read More
It is well-established that physicians respond to various economic incentives by changing their treatment behavior. A recent study explores this phenomenon in the context of Medicare's cancer chemotherapy drug reimbursement…
Read More
Palliative care has been extensively researched and the results indicate greater quality of life and patient satisfaction for persons with terminal illness. New research suggests it also extends survival.
Read More
A study discusses trends in the use of emergency rooms. Medicaid beneficiaries are the vast majority of the increase in utilization, which may reflect poor access to primary care or…
Read More
New research adds more caution to the promotion of great benefits from electronic medical records. The researchers found that in hospitals, costs actually increased and quality worsened by some measures,…
Read More
Another selection of medical delights, including a telemedicine study that didn't show improved outcomes, a telemedicine study that demonstrated the value of teleaudiology, end-of-life care, physician quality measurement, hospital quality…
Read More
Another recent report looks at HIEs, which are part of the critical infrastructure for reform. The status of each state's efforts and progress are detailed, as well as some general…
Read More
Medical errors have received a lot of attention since the Institute of Medicine published a seminal report almost a decade ago. A new analysis from the Society of Actuaries suggests…
Read More