Hopefully winter nears its end; it has been brutal where we are. This week’s Potpourri may offer a little diversion, covering defensive medicine, a pediatric tele-consultation service, home stroke rehabilitation, consumers’ ability to afford care, patient satisfaction and hospital readmission rates and a mobile phone app to improve medication adherence.
The latest Dartmouth Atlas work looks at variation in elective surgery rates in the context of patient involvement in decision-making. The report highlights differences in treatment for a number of common conditions and provides good advice for patients.
It is sometimes overlooked that one of the goals of a workers’ compensation system should be to get employees back to work as soon as possible. A Rand brief looks at trends in this regard in California.
A new report from the Rand Corporation reviews various proposals for changing payment methods to providers. The researchers categorize payment reforms into 11 models and review appropriate performance measures for each.
The Medicare Advantage Stars program is reviewed in a Kaiser Family Foundation brief which discusses coming changes in the calculations and the current ratings and characteristics of a number of plans
A positively presidential set of health care data points for your edification in today’s Potpourri, including examining correlations between hospital volume, quality and costs, improving quality program adherence, creating good insurance markets, the physician gender pay gap, the effects of the health reform law, and potential inconsistencies in HHS’ HIT incentive programs.
The leading reason advocates use for demanding universal coverage is that it will improve health and health outcomes for lower socioeconomic groups. New research from Canada indicates that this is not likely to be true.
A BIO study looks at the success rates for pharmaceutical and biotech candidates over a multi-year period, finding a fairly low rate, which doesn’t vary much by type of drug or disease addressed.
Yet another study has emerged on the factors responsible for apparent variation in costs of treating Medicare patients, this one focused on the high-cost quartile of beneficiaries and finding that health status accounts for much of the variation.