Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Previous studies have found that paitents of staff/group model HMOs consistently report lower quality of care than patients of Network HMOs. The finding of Rodriguez et al. (2009) contradicts these assumptions. They find the following: Physicians belonging to integrated medical groups had better performance on the communication and care coordination measures. Physicians belonging to medical…
The cover story of this week’s Economist examings healthcare reform in America (“This is going to hurt“). The story recounts some of the many ills of the U.S. healthcare system: too many uninsured, too expensive, and low quality outcomes. This is not news. What does The Economist propose to fix the American healthcare system? …
There is an interesting debate at the N.Y. Times discussing how to reform physician payment to increase quality and decrease cost. Below is an excerpt from a Seattle emergency room doctor. In this, they are half right: over-utilization is a driver of cost, and it is in part driven by doctors’ economic incentives. The underlying…
Joe Paduda of Managed Care Matters has a two great posts on Medicare’s new payment structure. The first post reports how exactly Medicare is changing its reimbursement for medical services. “It looks like reimbursement for cognitive services – the 99xxx codes for readers expert in CPT-4s…office visits and similar services for others – will…
In the news, you often hear that there are shortages of nurses and physicians. We need more nurses and physicians, right? According to an editorial by Laurence Baker in Health Services Review, we should be a little skeptical of calls for more and more healthcare providers. If supplier-induced demand is a problem, more providers will…
Bob Laszewski has a great posts on 5 false “solutions” to reduce health care costs. These are: EMR: Making electronic medical records universal will greatly improve health care quality, but the impact on cost will be minor. Better quality care can reduce iatrogenic injuries and reduce cost, but the cost reduction–if any–will likely be small…
How do financial arrangement between physicians within a medical group affect efficiency levels? This is the question Gaynor and Pauly (JPE 1990) attempt to answer. Theory The authors assume that the quantity of medical services is produced by the following production function: qi = f(hi, ti, ki, ei, θi) h: physician hours, t: non-physician hours,…
Pay-for-performance (P4P) is the latest rage among health wonks as to how to improve the health care system. But does P4P really improve quality? Mullen, Frank and Rosenthal (2008) hope to answer this question. One would initially believe that paying physicians to perform certain medically necessary tasks will improve quality. Further, some P4P involves structural…
With the economy in a downturn, many firms have been hard hit. Industries that sell luxury goods have been especially hard hit. One example of a luxury good sector taking a beating is the elective surgery market. The New York Times reports that dermatologists, facial surgeons and plastic surgeons have all seen a significant drop in…
Patients generally believe that managed care systems are put in place to restrict their access to care. Many patients believe that physicians who receive capitation compensation will provide less care to their patients than physicians who are paid on a fee-for-service basis. A paper by Fang and Rizzo (2008) investigates whether or not this is really they…