Another Potpourri brimming with doses of useful information that you eagerly await each week, including Medicare special needs plans and patients with diabetes, health information technology venture capital funding and M & A, identifying overuse in health care, what makes a better medical group, does merging weak hospitals help them and interventions that appear to work to prevent development of diabetes.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has engaged in a number of care management demonstrations over the years. The Congressional Budget Office adds its assessment to the body of research examining the outcomes of those demostrations.
A report from the Urban Institute projects what savings might be available from greater use of intensive care management for persons with serious, multiple chronic diseases.
Disease registries are used to track a number of patients with a common condition to determine factors which affect their outcomes and to help guide their treatment. An article in Health Affairs reviews a number of disease registries in several countries, finding that they have a high potential to improve overall quality.
Obesity is often fingered as a leading cause of health care spending and health spending growth. It also causes significant personal discomfort to those who are overweight. A pair of articles in the NEJM describe the outcomes of interventions to help patients lose weight.
Winter nears but our Potpourri will distract you from the cold breezes, providing compelling nuggets on prostate screening recommendations, consumer use of technology for health, insurer medical cost trends, what to do about Medicare’s physician payments, heart failure hospitalization and mortality rates and rates of non-filling of new prescriptions.
Medicare/Medicaid dual eligibles are relatively poor, elderly or disabled persons who have very high health spending. A report from America’s Health Insurance Plans discusses how care coordination programs can achieve significant savings for the programs and better health outcomes for the patients.