Date Post Title Post Summary Topics
Apr 28, 2011 Where’s the Patient in the Patient-Centered Medical Home? PCMH models are new, diverse, dynamic, and evolving. We need to understand them, work with them, and design them from blueprints that meet patients’ needs. Chronic Disease | Health Reform | Public Health
Apr 25, 2011 Will Hospital Cost-Shifting Blunt the Impact of Medicare Payment Reform? Ask any policy wonk to rattle off the most powerful ways to improve performance in the U.S. health care system and you’ll likely hear them mention payment reform. You’ll hear them talk about how the U.S. health care system has historically paid for quantity, not quality and these policy wonks will argue that successful health care reform must include introducing so-called pay-for-performance programs that link payments to outcomes. Costs & Economic Analysis | Hospitals | Medicare
Apr 21, 2011 Progress Needed on End-of-Life Care Palliative care is the thorough assessment and treatment of symptoms, attention to the whole person and support for the entire journey we each will face at the end of life. We know palliative care helps. Let's make it standard care. Aging | Chronic Disease | Insurance
Apr 21, 2011 New Ways to Increase Physical Activity and Play: Using What’s Already in Our Backyards For individuals fortunate enough to have access to a car, what is it that makes us pack up our things, load the kids or perhaps the family dog and head out across town instead of heading to a local playground we could reach on foot? Obesity | Public Health | Women & Children
Apr 15, 2011 Preventive Screenings Could be Harmful to Your Health Consumer Reports, which has been rating everything from cars to coffeemakers for the past 75 years, evaluated a different kind of item earlier this year: heart screening tests. The unprecedented move came after the magazine discovered that more than 40 percent of its subscribers had undergone unnecessary heart testing Hospitals | Insurance | Public Health
Apr 7, 2011 Paving the Way for Successful CLASS Implementation A major challenge of the current system of care for adults with functional limitations is the inability of middle-income individuals to protect themselves against the financial risk of needing and accessing available supports and services to help them remain in their homes and communities. Over 10 million Americans need supports and services today due to disabling conditions, and this figure will likely grow due to population aging. In 2008, the cost of this care totaled $264 billion, comprising public, private, and in-kind expenditures. Chronic Disease | Community Health | Managed Care
Apr 5, 2011 Text4baby: Health Care Providers Are Connecting With Mothers-To-Be Via Cellphones Text4baby? No, babies in utero are not that tech-savvy, not even in 2011, not yet at least. But a program that sends free health and wellness cellphone text messages to women during pregnancy and the first year of the baby’s life has been getting attention. Hospitals | Public Health | Women & Children