Hospital Quality: The Devil is in the Details
In the debate over health care reform, one of the few issues everyone agrees on is the need for quality improvement (QI). Many believe we should reward the best performers and penalize those that fail...
View ArticleAn Ounce of Prevention
The projected benefits of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are based on several central tenants inherent to the law, such as the expected improvement in utilization of cost-saving preventative medicine...
View ArticleObamacare: Cheaper and Better than Health Insurance pre-ACA
Despite scary media headlines about rising health insurance costs due to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), this study found that 3 in 4 self-employed adults ages 18-64 paid less after-tax on the ACA...
View ArticleDecreasing Disparities in Health Coverage
Implemented in 2010, the Affordable Care Act (ACA)’s major coverage expansion was designed to improve the accessibility and affordability of health insurance. Although the ACA’s coverage expansion...
View ArticleDocs Earn More with ACA, if State Participates
The Affordable Care Act is paying doctors more through Medicaid expansion. Payments to physicians for hospital stays increased by $3.38 (4.2%) per day. About half of the higher payments were due to...
View ArticleHigher drug spending lowers other costs
Medicaid expansion has dramatically increased the number of Americans with health insurance. However, many have raised concerns over the costs to federal, state, and local government. It is estimated...
View Article“Greed in a Good Cause is Still Greed”
The government is spending $24.6 billion every year on tax breaks for approximately 2,100 nonprofit hospitals in the United States. But in return, these nonprofit hospitals are only spending 3% of...
View ArticleHow strongly does coverage affect access?
With the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act extending coverage to citizens with income less than 138% of the federal poverty level (FPL), it was hoped that the newly insured would have...
View ArticleAre We There Yet?
In 2004, President George W. Bush launched an initiative to provide all Americans with electronic health records (EHR) by 2014. In 2009, Congress passed the HITECH Act, providing $30 billion to help...
View ArticleThe Country Nurse
A recent study published in Medical Care examined the relationship of geographic accessibility to primary care providers. Data derived from the 2013 Area Health Resource File, which provides a...
View ArticleDelivery System Reforms: Delivering Value?
Restructuring health care delivery to reduce costs and improve quality is a fundamental part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and a response to the long history of high domestic healthcare spending...
View ArticleMinorities more likely to be Readmitted
Prevention of hospital readmissions serves as one of the primary metrics for quality improvement under the Affordable Care Act. In 2012, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) began...
View ArticleFacts Don’t Support the Second Amendment
After the Newtown, Connecticut shooting, National Rifle Association (NRA) executive vice president Wayne LaPierre said, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” Gun...
View Article“I’m from the Government & I’m here to help”
Despite fears of failing Marketplaces, death spirals, and a recent threat by UnitedHealth to withdraw from the Marketplaces altogether, researchers find that insurer participation and Marketplace...
View ArticleWill direct primary care bring joy back to medicine
More than half of physicians report at least one symptom of burnout. This is much higher than in the general population. Source: Jeff Kubina (Flickr/CC) The major factors of physician satisfaction...
View ArticleER visits unchanged after ACA
The Affordable Care Act was supposed to expand coverage to the uninsured and many politicians claimed this would result in lower use of “expensive emergency rooms” for treatment of patients’ acute...
View ArticleMedicaid is a financial boon for hospitals
One of the primary goals of the Affordable Care Act was to extend coverage broadly across the population: to the sick and uninsurable, to the healthy, and to the poor. A major mechanism to accomplish...
View ArticleWhy Physician Assistants don’t do Primary Care
As increasing proportions of the population now have coverage under the Affordable Care Act, the primary care physician shortage has become increasingly concerning. Concepts such as team-based care and...
View ArticleU.S. Taxpayers Pay for Two-Thirds of Healthcare
Who pays for health care in the United States? Public perception lays the burden of health care spending on individuals and private entities, and estimates from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid...
View ArticleICU Telemedicine Better at Saving Lives
Telemedicine is all the rage for policymakers looking for solutions to access issues, especially in rural and underserved communities. Implementation of telemedicine in practice has run into a number...
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