Health Affairs

Don Berwick’s highest priority as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is transforming the American health care system in accord with the vision set forth in his 2008 “Triple Aim” Health Affairs article. (This article and all of Berwick’s Health Affairs writings are freely available in full to all readers.) Berwick spoke about... Read the rest of this entry »

The world faces a public health crisis: growing numbers of bacteria are becoming resistant to available antibiotics, and there are few new antibiotics in the drug development pipeline. Writing in the September issue of Health Affairs, Aaron Kesselheim and Kevin Outterson propose an innovative approach to this dilemma. Their  proposal is designed to both increase... Read the rest of this entry »

The national health spending reports published in Health Affairs every year by researchers at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Office of the Actuary have long been considered the “gold standard” in health spending estimates by the health policy community. Earlier this week, Health Affairs published new projections by Andrea Sisko and her CMS coauthors of national... Read the rest of this entry »

The meaningful use of electronic health records is the topic of several of the most-read Health Affairs Blog posts for August. Included in the list is a post on meaningful use written jointly by health IT national coordinator David Blumenthal and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Don Berwick. Additional posts provide perspectives on meaningful use from... Read the rest of this entry »

The just-released September 2010 issue of Health Affairs contains a section on malpractice and medical errors. Today, the GrantWatch Blog looks at examples of foundation funding of research on malpractice reform and suggests related resources for further reading on this controversial topic. New Issue Brief: “Will the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act Address the... Read the rest of this entry »

U.S. health spending is projected to reach nearly $4.6 trillion by 2019, growing at an average annual rate over the next decade of 6.3 percent, according to economists at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).  By 2019, health care is projected to account for nearly one of every five U.S. dollars spent, or... Read the rest of this entry »

The busy daytime schedules of office-based primary care doctors, coupled with limited access to primary care services, have led a large number of Americans to seek care in hospital emergency departments, even when the problem may not be an emergency.  According to a new study in the September issue of Health Affairs, more than a quarter... Read the rest of this entry »

Below, we have tabulated a list of the three most-read GrantWatch Blog posts in August 2010. (GrantWatch Blog launched in March 2010.) Here is a chance to take a gander at these posts if you missed them when the original Tweet or e-alert came out. “The Relief of Suffering from Serious Illness: How Foundations Can... Read the rest of this entry »

Medical malpractice and reform proposals have been a longstanding battleground of U.S. health policy. On the one hand, studies have shown that health care is rife with errors and avoidable injury to patients. On the other, doctors and hospitals fear frivolous lawsuits and resent high malpractice insurance premiums. It’s been generally agreed that one result... Read the rest of this entry »

At the beginning of this year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) launched an initiative called Connecting Kids to Coverage, designed to identify (and subsequently enroll) the nearly five million uninsured children thought to be eligible for Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). In the past it had been difficult... Read the rest of this entry »

Workers on average are paying nearly $4,000 this year toward the cost of family health coverage — an increase of 14 percent, or $482, above what they paid last year, according to the benchmark 2010 Employer Health Benefits Survey released today by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust (HRET). Selected... Read the rest of this entry »

Henry Stern at InsureBlog hosts the latest edition of the Health Wonk Review. As always, the Review highlights many interesting posts. Among them: “New Ideas In Medicare Financing,” a Health Affairs Blog post by Michael O’Grady and Jennifer Young.

The Medicaid program is facing major new challenges.  The new health care law puts both significant new responsibilities and financial burdens on the program.  At the same time, Medicaid, as one of the three major federal entitlement programs, is a top priority for policy makers trying to address the federal government’s staggering budget deficits.  Unfortunately,... Read the rest of this entry »