Another wonderful collection of health care research summaries, including a GAO report on likely effects of the MLR rule, physician work intensity, reducing hospital-acquired infections, discharge followup and hospital readmissions, the effect of pay-for-performance on cardiac care and use of EHRs and health history recording.
A Kaiser Family Foundation report surveys state managed care Medicaid programs, finding a surge in utilization of health plans and addition of eligibility categories to the plans. A great variety of features are used in different states, but the trend toward more managed care is clear.
A paper prepared by Mathematica for the New York State Health Foundation discussions readmissions in the state and evaluates proposed methods of reducing those readmissions. Just in New York, billions of dollars could potentially be saved by effective interventions.
Hospitals and other providers have expressed concern that health plan consolidation jeopardizes the adequacy of reimbursement to providers but a new piece of research indicates that hospital consolidation is a much greater threat to attempts to control health spending.
New research provides stronger evidence that using electronic health records may improve quality of care according to some measures more than continuing to use paper medical records, at least for diabetes patients.
The leaves begin to fall but not the quality of our Potpourri, this week including useful data on hospital readmissions in the VA system, what makes top hospitals successful, the accuracy of mortality ratings for children’s hospitals, the use of mortality rankings to identify the best hospitals, advertising by health care providers and the quality effects of the annual changeover of trainees in hospitals.
A McKinsey Quarterly article explores why the market for better home health care technologies seems to be developing so slowly, particularly in light of rapidly growing demand and suggests changes to accelerate these new technologies.
A new Cochrane Review finds very minimal evidence to suggest that efforts aimed at improving quality of care by creating financial rewards or penalties for primary care physicians are having the desired impact, suggesting caution in implementing the programs until there is further and better quality research.
The evidence continues to pile up that higher provider unit costs in the United States are the primary driver of our much higher than average per capita national health spending. Research published in Health Affairs indicates that our physician costs are higher because physicians charge more than in other countries.