Health Affairs

At a recent symposium concerning both saving money and improving patient care, Health Affairs Editor-in Chief Susan Dentzer stated, “It is well established now that one can in fact improve the quality of health care and reduce the costs at the same time.”  This is exactly the principle behind the growing movement toward patient-centered care.  [...]

With primary care medicine facing ever increasing pressures—fewer doctors to treat more patients and a continual maze of restrictions on reimbursement—primary care practitioners are trying to diagnose and treat obesity with one hand tied behind their backs. The result, unfortunately, is that for what is likely the nation’s costliest disease, strains on coverage have been [...]

The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) is the closest thing Congress has to adult supervision on important health policy questions. The Commission commands bipartisan respect both for its record of sound policy advice and for its leadership. With its October recommendations, MedPac attempted to solve the sustainable growth rate (SGR) physician payment formula budget crisis [...]

Editor’s Note: There are ongoing legal and policy debates regarding the role of the Relative Value Scale Update Committee (RUC) in advising the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on relative Medicare payment rates for different types of physician services. Below, Peter Carmel, the president of the American Medical Association, defends the role of the [...]

Editor’s Note: There are ongoing legal and policy debates regarding the role of the Relative Value Scale Update Committee (RUC) in advising the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on relative Medicare payment rates for different types of physician services. Below, Brian Klepper and David Kibbe argue for ending the RUC’s role in the Medicare [...]

Editor’s note: See additional posts on the Medicare Shared Savings Program Final Rule  and related delivery system and payment reform initiatives by Debra Ness and William Kramer, Lawrence Casalino and Stephen Shortell,  Douglas Hastings, and Mark McClellan and Elliott Fisher. Innovation has revolutionized medicine.  Technology enables us to peer into the depths of the human body to [...]

Research appearing in the newly released September issue of Health Affairs shows that physicians in the United States are paid more per service than doctors in other countries—in some cases double. There is also a far bigger gap between fees paid for primary care and fees paid for specialty care in the United States, compared [...]

With the Budget Control Act of 2011 now signed into law, health care lobbyists are preparing to fight any changes to federal programs that affect their constituents.  One particular concern for physicians is the scheduled 30 percent cut to Medicare reimbursement mandated by the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula. Any attempt to waive these cuts will need [...]

Regarding the subject of “health care reform” during the past year, it is certain that more has been written about, more conferences have been devoted to, and more consultants have been engaged for the topic of “accountable care organizations” (ACOs) than any other.  ACOs are in the spotlight both because of several provisions in the [...]

More doctors who aren’t psychiatrists are offering antidepressants to patients, making these drugs the third most commonly prescribed group of medications in the United States, according to a study in the August issue of Health Affairs. A look at twelve-year trends shows that the percentage of visits in which antidepressants were prescribed to patients by [...]

One of American politics’ most disingenuous conceits is that health care must cost what we currently pay. Another is that the only way to make it cost less is to deny care. It has been in industry executives’ financial interests to perpetuate these myths, but most will acknowledge privately that the way we value and [...]

The federal government’s Beacon Program provides funding to 17 communities that have already made inroads in the development of secure, private, and accurate systems of electronic health record (EHR) adoption and health information exchange. This is the fifth in a series of Health Affairs Blog posts in which leaders of several Beacon communities discuss their [...]

The burden imposed on our society by type 2 diabetes mellitus has grown dramatically over the last decade.  Greater numbers of people than ever before are being diagnosed with diabetes at younger ages.  These people and their families must face the spectrum of implications brought on by diabetes, including its many associated medical complications. The [...]

Tim Jost’s analysis of crucial appellate arguments over the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act leads June’s list of most-read Health Affairs Blog posts. Jost examines the arguments before the federal Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in a challenge to the legislation brought by more than half the states and the National Federation of Independent [...]

Across the country, policy experts are heralding accountable care organizations (ACOs) as the way to rethink the delivery of higher quality and more efficient care. Yet Medicaid, which cares for many of the nation’s sickest and highest-cost patients, has been largely absent from the ACO conversation. Now that the June 6 deadline for comments to [...]

Barbara Starfield, a seminal figure in the health services research community who made landmark contributions in primary care and other areas, died suddenly on Friday, June 10, of an apparent heart attack. Health Affairs extends its deepest sympathies to the family and friends of Dr. Starfield. To help honor Dr. Starfield’s career, Health Affairs is [...]

Most children in the United States are getting regularly scheduled immunizations for infant and childhood diseases. But a new survey shows that some parents remain unpersuaded that all vaccines are safe or even necessary. The survey was published yesterday in the June issue of Health Affairs, a thematic volume titled “Strategies For The ‘Decade Of [...]

Two new studies published today in the June issue of Health Affairs project huge benefits from a major ramp-up of vaccine development and delivery over the next 10 years in 72 countries. The studies, both from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, find that boosting vaccine coverage could prevent the deaths of 6.4 million children, [...]

Tomorrow, Thursday June 9, at 8:30 AM at the W Hotel in Washington DC, Health Affairs will hold a briefing in conjunction with the release of its June 2011 issue, “Strategies For The ’Decade of Vaccines.’” A complete line-up of speakers and other details are available here. If you want to attend the briefing, you can RSVP [...]

In a remarkable recent interview, Donald Berwick MD, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), eloquently described his vision of value-based health care. Paying for value is an incentive…The underlying idea of improvement is that American health care, historically built in fragments, often cannot achieve for patients what it really wants to [...]