More delightful health facts for your edification in our most recent Potpourri, including the cost of obesity, an employer survey on wellness programs, opportunities for hospitals to reduce costs, an…
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Improving primary care is viewed as a method to lower health spending while maintaining or even improving quality. A Health Affairs article reports on a Virginia program that appears to…
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The segment of the population which is elderly and poor, thus often eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid coverage, is often not in good health and has very high expenses.…
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All the focus on quality and the effect of spending on quality of care has led to some creative research approaches to understanding what that relationship may be. A new…
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A Medicare Payment Advisory Commission report summarizes the federal incentive program for adoption and meaningful use of electronic health records and reports on progress, which appears to be very slow.
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Our latest Potpourri features the comparative cost of cancer care in the US and elsewhere, the effect of genomics on spending, international practice guidelines, state Medicaid waivers, unintended consequences from…
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The IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics has released a wonderful report on use of prescription drugs in the United States in 2011. A great deal of detailed information on therapeutic…
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In an era of multiple programs measuring outcomes and costs by provider and by disease or condition, the importance of consistent coding in the data used to do the measurement…
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One of the surprises of the expansion of health coverage in Massachusetts is that it seems to have increased emergency room use. A new study shows that this phenomenon might…
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In general, lower drug costs have helped decrease health spending growth, but specialty drug prices and use, often for cancer, have increased rapidly. New reports show these cost increases are…
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About this Blog
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 khroche@healthy-skeptic.com.