A new paper sponsored by the NBER comes through in its usual spectacular fashion with information showing little correlation between private insurance and Medicare spending per person and a strong link between hospital consolidation, prices and private health plan costs.
Research published in Health Affairs finds that private health plans are paying increasingly more for hospital services compared to Medicare and Medicaid.
And in yet another study in Health Affairs indicating the harms of hospital consolidation of medical services, ambulatory surgery centers raised prices much less in the last few years than did hospital outpatient departments providing the same services.
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/34/10/1753.abstractOnce again people are shocked, just shocked, when the response to a government regulation is to try to minimize the consequences. The Wall Street Journal finds a relationship between hospitals showing significant declines in readmissions and increased use of observation stays at those hospitals. Guess what, readmissions are penalized but being "readmitted" for "observation" doesn't count.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/medicare-rules-reshape-hospital-admissions-1449024342Leavitt Partners publishes an assessment of the Medicare hospital value-based purchasing program.
An analysis from HealthGrades reports on variable quality among hospitals in the same geography.
Research in JAMA Internal Medicine finds that greater hospital ownership of physician practices leads to a significant increase in prices for services.
According to a Government Accounting Office Report, so far not much to show from CMS’ hospital value-based purchasing program.
Research carried in the British Medical Journal finds that physician-owned hospitals don’t appear to have some of the evils ascribed to them.
According to a New York Times analysis, hospitals are continuing to raise prices at a healthy, or depending on your perspective, unhealthy clip.
The Government Accounting Office examines what causes variation in the pricing of certain high-cost procedures, finding it is largely attributable to hospital costs.
An article in the Harvard Business Review suggests that many hospital cost-cutting efforts may be misguided.
Research published in the New England Journal of Medicine finds that hospital care is improving for most subgroups, according to common performance measures.