A study of Medicare beneficiaries admitted to U.S. hospitals with congestive heart failure (CHF) showed no definitive connection between the cost and quality of care, or between cost and death rates. The research was published Feb. 22 in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
Current efforts to collect and publicly report data on discharge planning are unlikely to yield large reductions in unnecessary readmissions, according to study authors in the Dec. 31 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
As lawmakers debate how to pay for an overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system, a report from the Commonwealth Fund projects that including both private and public insurance choices in a new insurance exchange would save the United States as much as $265 billion in administrative costs from 2010 to 2020.
As policymakers consider ways to cut health costs as a part of healthcare reform, a new survey of U.S. physician practices finds that physicians are spending, on average, the equivalent of three work weeks annually on administrative tasks required by health plans, according to a study published online May 14 in Health Affairs.
Although the use of healthcare IT has had little effect on patient safety thus far, current programs in practice, such as those implemented in New York state, are shedding light on the necessity for further examination, according to studies published in the March issue of Health Affairs.
Written by Ralph Brindis, MD, MPH, FACC
In 2002, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released a report that found racial and ethnic minorities received lower quality of care that persisted even when clinical factors—such as disease stage, severity, comorbidities and age—were taken into account. Treatment for cardiovascular disease was no exception.
|
A gap exists between policy makers' expectations that current commercial EMRs can improve coordination of patient care and clinicians' real-world experiences with EMRs, according to a study conducted by the Center for Studying Health System Change and published online Dec. 22, 2009, in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
A report by the New York City-based Commonwealth Fund Commission has found there is a significant difference between the access, quality and cost of healthcare across state lines and that healthcare disparities among states continue to widen.
Physicians can and should play a leading role in achieving healthcare reform, according to a perspective published online May 21 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
CHICAGO—The U.S. healthcare system needs to quickly implement widespread, systematic reform to improve patient outcomes and reduce massive costs, which are currently approaching 20 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), according to George C. Halvorson, chairman and CEO of Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals.
At Texas hospitals that have automated some aspects of their information systems, patients appear to have fewer complications, lower death rates and reduced costs, according to a report in the Jan. 26 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.
Private fee-for-service (PFFS) Medicare Advantage plans will be paid an average 16.6 percent more in 2008 compared to what the same enrollees would have cost in the traditional Medicare FFS program, according to a report from the Commonwealth Fund.
|
RSS 
Middle age introduces itself in many ways; one is atrial fibrillation (AF). My onset of AF seems to have coincided with a mountain bike accident in the woods of North Carolina that resulted in some cracked ribs.
The use of health IT to reduce rehospitalizations will be welcome but also disruptive, said Stephen Jencks, an independent consultant in healthcare safety during a Feb. 24 webinar on the potential use of health IT to mitigate rehospitalizations, sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
A new hospital breaking ground usually isn’t breaking news. But the vision of patient care at one new facility, tentatively named Palomar Medical Center West (PMC West), is currently illegal under California state law.
There are cases presented to all physicians when we have to balance benefits of a particular treatment with concerns around safety for certain patients. In interventional cardiology, we see this dilemma with drug-eluting stents (DES). While this technology provides effective therapy for many patients with ischemia-inducing coronary lesions, there are certain patient groups that encounter problems for different reasons.