Research in the Journal of the American Medical Association reviews tools used to help engaged depressed patients in treating their condition.
A new report from the Institute of Medicine focuses on the quality of cancer care in the United States, finding serious reason for concern about quality and cost to consumers.
A review by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality found little clear evidence of benefit from outpatient case management for adults with complex medical needs.
One common quality improvement effort in recent years has been to speed up the time it takes to get heart attack victims to the hospital for interventions to increase survival. It appears those have little effect on mortality.
A comprehensive hypertension control program utilized by Kaiser Permanente showed good results in engaging patients and getting blood pressure lower, but may have raised costs.
National health plan UnitedHealth Group has had success using incentives to create patient engagement with its own employee population, according to an article in Health Affairs.
Research published in the New England Journal of Medicine finds that an intensive lifestyle intervention for diabetes patients did not change cardiovascular outcomes.
Overuse of certain medical services is believed to be widespread and to contribute to excessive health spending growth. A review of the literature suggests that no particular organized system of care does a better job than others at reducing inappropriate service use.
Self care and self-management of health have the potential to save costs, increase patient engagement and potentially improve outcomes. A study published in the British Journal of Medicine suggests that supported self-care may not achieve that potential.
A new paper from Rand looks at the effect of integrated care on a variety of outcomes, including provider and patient satisfaction, quality and costs.
Even after all the emphasis on guidelines and pay-for-performance the quality of care for diabetes patients has shown only very moderate improvement in the last ten years.