A study released by a private vendor evaluates wellness and benefit administration benchmarks in 2012.
The Institute of Medicine released a report regarding supposed unnecessary spending on health care in the United States and potential ways to remedy that problem, largely through use of health information technology.
With all the federal incentive money sloshing around, the health information technology market, especially for electronic medical records, has understandably been hot and there are many competitors all seeking revenue from that market. A recent Medscape survey identifies which EHR vendors seem to be making the most progress.
A survey from Revive Health examined hospital perceptions of payers, and other issues. Wellpoint is rated worst, many independent Blue Cross plans do poorly as well and UnitedHealth Group, while not highly ranked, is showing improvement. Hospitals are pessimistic about reform but undertaking a number of incented initiatives like ACOs and greater use of HIT.
Are financial incentives for providers a good thing? A review in the British Medical Journal examines when financial incentives can be helpful in improving care and when they might actually lead to worse outcomes. The authors created a checklist designed to provide easy guidance on design and implementation of pay for performance type programs.
A report from the Centers for Disease Control updates information on rates of electronic health record adoption. Given the incentives from the federal government, adoption seems surprisingly slow and meaningful use lags even further behind. Most doctors report being satisfied with their system.
AONHewitt has released its 2012 Health Care Survey, which largely reviews employer attitudes and actions toward health care coverage. The impacts of the health reform law are obviously foremost on companies’ agendas, with cost increases being the biggest challenge and one that is really unaddressed by the reform law.
Yet another brilliant collection of health care data points, including use of gene profiling tests to guide breast cancer care, 30-day mortality models for stroke performance, hospital medication administration errors, the costs of the Medicare physician payment fix and patient-sharing networks among physicians.
The first year of experience with Medicare’s readmission program is in and Kaiser has done an initial analysis of the results. A large number of hospitals will be penalized, mostly those who can least afford it, and the program continues to show how poorly designed it is and what severe unintended consequences will ensue from its implementation.
Research published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research focuses on whether and why the use of online health applications improves patient empowerment and knowledge and if such improvement leads to better health outcomes.