Among government health care programs, the Part D prescription drug benefit in Medicare has been extremely successful, costing less than projected. Beneficiaries also are satisfied with the program, which consists of all private plans. A Kaiser report examines Part D spending trends.
The Government Accounting Office reports on initial results from the Medicare competitive bidding program for durable medical equipment, finding that it appeared to have succeeded in reducing spending, while not unduly affecting beneficiary access.
This week’s Potpourri contains tasty morsels of health care nutrition, including geographic variation in cardiac procedures, barriers to shared decision-making, issues in the credibility of survey-based research, the value of a diabetes disease management program, and differences in hospital costs.
The Commonwealth Fund puts out yet another report decrying the sorry American health system, which has by far the highest per capita costs and supposedly no better outcomes. It is unclear, however, that Americans don’t actually by and large get more total value for their dollars and the higher spending is largely due to unit prices.
Our final post on the EMD Serono Specialty Digest, with reference to specialty pharmacy provider trends, oncology and outcomes and comparative effectiveness research.
A continuation of information from the EMD Serono Specialty Digest, with a focus on trends in spending and utilization management.
EMD Serono puts out an annual report on specialty drug use that is outstanding. This year’s edition carries on the tradition with a plethora of useful data and charts based on surveys and collection of other data. The report demonstrates that this fast-growing category has attracted new benefit design and utilization management efforts to rein in spending.
This edition of our data-packed Potpourri focuses on hospital readmissions, use of computer physician order entry systems, what employers will do after 2014 when all of the health law kicks in, and hospital pay-for-performance programs.
Pay-for-performance programs have enough problems demonstrating that they actually work to improve outcomes and now the Government Accounting Office has identified another potential problem for these initiatives–the federal fraud and abuse regulations.
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 [email protected].
© 2024 Healthy Skeptic.
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