NEW Reviews
Law and Ointment »
“Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if [...]
Bundled Payment
A Policy Prescription for 2012 »
Two years after the enactment of the Affordable Care Act, opponents and proponents are destined to [...]
PROMETHEUS Fails to Enlighten »
According to legend, Prometheus (the Greek Titan) brought fire and enlightenment to mankind. [...]
Reforming Reimbursement »
Many provisions in the Affordable Care Act make minor tweaks to the payment strategy for physicians [...]
“Meaningful Use” for EHR’s Defined
Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services set out definitions for the “meaningful use” of electronic health records. Designed to qualify eligible providers for incentive payments, these rules will spark a revolution. You could ...
MassHealth's P4P Program Fails to Produce
Conflicting with evidence from other studies, an evaluation of MassHealth’s Medicaid Pay-for-Performance plan failed to show a significant effect on quality improvement measures despite spending $2.6 million for incentives. Pay for Performance (P4P) is the concept ...
HPV Vaccine: A License to Thrill?
While some debate the political wisdom of mandating HPV vaccination of young girls, the science is clear. The vaccines are safe, reduce the burden of a disease that infects 6 million women annually, and do ...
The Future of Nursing
Typical nursing tasks - medication administration, direct care of patients, and patient education - are often subsidiary to physician work. Advanced practice nursing, however, operates as a physician substitute. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and ...
Single-Payer’s Impact on Physician Income
“No boy should have to depend either for his leg or his life upon the ability of his parents to raise enough money to bring a first-class surgeon to his bedside.” Tommy Douglas, the father of Canadian ...
Scrambling to rescue ACO’s
Health care systems such as the Mayo and Cleveland clinics - which are organized the way policy makers envision accountable care organizations - initially balked at the rules proposed by CMS. Now, the rules have ...
Itemized Deduction for Medical Expenses
Americans that spend high proportions of their income on medical expenses are entitled to deduct those above 7.5 percent of income from personal taxes. The savings amount to nearly $1,000 off the cost of medical ...
Metrics for Doctors and Patients
Electronic health records can improve processes of care as well as real health outcomes for diabetic patients. However, it is critical that patients themselves are held accountable for their own health and given the tools ...
Individual Health Insurance Mandates - Pros & Cons
Several universal insurance coverage models incorporate an individual mandate which requires every person to obtain health insurance coverage. A main argument for individual mandates centers around the elimination of free-riders who choose to forego private ...
Gender differences in health costs
Health insurance pools risk and redistributes costs among the members of society. Women tend to accrue greater health care costs than their male counterparts. Under the Affordable Care Act all health insurance premiums - for ...
Health IT
EMRs: Airbags for when your doctor »
EMRs have the potential to prevent dangerous medication errors - I certainly have been saved a few times by them - but in this study appear to function [Read More]
Affordable Care Act
Two Sides of the »
For as much as Governor Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama may differ on economic [...]
Tho’ you may not »
Currently, employer-sponsored health insurance is treated as a tax free benefit. While [...]
Everyone Enters the »
Next week, the Supreme Court will begin deliberation as to whether or not citizens of the [...]
Anecdotes
Be like the Netherlands? »
Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post posted an article based on the Commonwealth Fund's recent international comparison on health spending. In it, she points out that the Netherlands (a nation whose entire population is the size of the United States' non-group private [Read More]