Provider performance reporting is spreading rapidly and increasingly has payment consequences attached to it. New research published in JAMA gives further reason to be cautious in designing and implementing these…
Read More
The week's Potpourri continues the tradition of presenting excellent nuggets of health information, including EHR use in the VA system, the effect of making surrogate care decisions, screening for ovarian…
Read More
CMS issued a proposed notice regarding its regular review of relative value units for physician reimbursement under Medicare. The notice gives you a sense of the impossibility of understanding what…
Read More
Two articles report on research into aspects of health information exchange, a cornerstone reason for expanding provider use of information technology, particularly electronic medical records. Infrastructure for HIE is severely…
Read More
A working paper at the National Bureau of Economics reports on an analysis of the effects of England's attempt to increase competition between hospitals on quality, finding that hospitals in…
Read More
A new report from McKinsey finds that the federal reform law will have more of an effect on the market for employer-based health insurance than other studies suggested would occur.…
Read More
Another scintillating menu of health care tidbits, including provider reaction to the proposed Accountable Care Organization rule; end-of-life care in the US and Canada; hospital volume and outcomes for difficult…
Read More
CMS has proposed a rule to implement a PPACA provision allowing access to extracts of provider-level Medicare data to evaluate performance, primarily on quality measures. This is a good first…
Read More
A new report on prices paid by commercial insurers in Massachusetts shows great variation, which appears unrelated to providers' costs or to the quality of care delivered. While the specific…
Read More
An Institute of Medicine report finds Medicare's geographic reimbursement adjustment formulas to be seriously flawed and suggests general principles to guide a reworking. The conclusions and follow-up reports are sure…
Read More
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.