Health Affairs

On Tuesday, June 5, Health Affairs will hold a briefing to discuss its June 2012 issue, “Focus On The Care Span For The Elderly And Disabled.” The volume explores a wide range of topics — from avoidable hospital admissions and readmissions, to coordination of care for dual eligibles, to reforming Medicare payment for skilled nursing... Read the rest of this entry »

On February 1, the American Medical Association’s Relative Value Scale Update Committee (RUC), Medicare’s primary advisor on physician payment, announced the addition of two seats: a permanent one for geriatrics and a rotating one for primary care. The American Geriatrics Society and the American College of Physicians praised the move as a step forward that... Read the rest of this entry »

Here are some blog posts that caught my eye this week, as I sifted through foundation blogs I follow. The descriptions are brief—just to give you a flavor of what the post is about.  This is a short week in the office for me, as I head over to nearby Baltimore for the Grantmakers In... Read the rest of this entry »

Flu vaccination rates among nursing home residents have improved slightly, particularly for blacks. Nonetheless, overall vaccination rates remain well below the 90 percent target for high-quality care, and black nursing home residents remain less likely to be vaccinated than whites, say Shubing Cai of Brown University and coauthors in the October issue of Health Affairs. The article... Read the rest of this entry »

A column by New York Times columnist David Brooks titled “Death and Budgets,” read in combination with a recent report from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“Medicare Hospices that Focus on Nursing Facility Residents”), makes painfully clear how urgently America must rethink the way... Read the rest of this entry »

A new Health Affairs Web First study finds that increased choice among Medicare Advantage plans leads to increased enrollment in the program among elderly Americans, but only when beneficiaries are choosing among 15 or fewer plans. When Medicare beneficiaries have a choice of 15 to 30 private plans, increased choice does not result in increased Medicare Advantage... Read the rest of this entry »

On July 7, 2011, Health Affairs will unveil its July 2011 issue, “New Directions In Systems Innovations.” The issue explores ongoing innovations in health care organization, delivery and financing across a broad front – from Vermont’s recent passage of single payer legislation, to new responsibilities for hospital boards of trustees as a consequence of the... Read the rest of this entry »

On July 7, 2011, Health Affairs will unveil its July 2011 issue, “New Directions In Systems Innovations.” The issue explores ongoing innovations in health care organization, delivery and financing across a broad front – from Vermont’s recent passage of single payer legislation, to new responsibilities for hospital boards of trustees as a consequence of the... Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re traveling over the long weekend, you’ll want to take along some reading material. While some might reach for a good novel by John Grisham or Dan Brown, the health policy blogs in this edition of the Health Wonk Review tackle equally compelling mysteries. Was the Medicare Trustees report really that gloomy? If Workers... Read the rest of this entry »

The latest Health Policy Brief from Health Affairs and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation examines the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Plan, a voluntary, publicly administered insurance program enacted as part of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. It is designed to help people should they become disabled and need long-term services and... Read the rest of this entry »

Health Affairs today adds a new Medical Education recording to its free collection of Narrative Matters essays on iTunes U. The account was written by Fitzhugh Mullan, a physician and clinical professor of pediatrics and public health at the George Washington University and the original editor of the “Narrative Matters” section. The essay, “Me And... Read the rest of this entry »

President Obama has begun his campaign for re-election in 2012.  Several Republicans have declared their intention to consider the possibility of running.   Meanwhile, implementation of health care reform proceeds slowly, with threats of defunding and legal action scuttling alongside to keep up.  Policy debates about accountable care organizations, medical homes, and other attempts to bring... Read the rest of this entry »

The challenge of reining in the rising costs of the Medicare Program is particularly thorny because it confronts a recalcitrant societal tension between the necessity for cost control and the value of open-ended technology use for life extension in the later years. That tension is becoming more deeply entrenched because a growing number of older... Read the rest of this entry »

Health Affairs has launched The Care Span, a new ongoing section of the journal, in its March 2011 edition. The Care Span will examine the topics of aging and disability, not as isolated experiences but as part of the full span of life. Toward this end, the journal aims to bring together the best current... Read the rest of this entry »

Health Affairs today added a podcast about medical errors to its free collection of podcasts of Narrative Matters essays on iTunes U. The essay was written by Michael Rowe, an associate clinical professor in the Yale School of Medicine. Titled “The Rest Is Silence,” it appeared in the July/August 2002 edition of Health Affairs. Health Affairs offers... Read the rest of this entry »

For the second time, a proposal to pay health care providers to counsel Medicare beneficiaries on future care options and end-of-life planning has fallen victim to the politics of the health care debate. The House included language to pay physicians and other providers for such “advance care planning” in its version of the Affordable Care Act, last... Read the rest of this entry »

Which groups of women, if any, should get regular mammograms to screen for breast cancer? This question has been the subject of passionate debate. For example, when the United States Preventive Services Task Force recommended that women without special risk factors begin regular mammograms at age 50, rather than 40, it unleashed an uproar that threatened... Read the rest of this entry »

On July 7, Robert Butler died of leukemia. Butler was the founding director of the National Institute on Aging, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and one of the nation’s leading authorities on aging and geriatrics. This post, by William Hazzard, Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington and Director of Geriatrics and Extended Care for the VA... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s note: Earlier this summer, on July 7, Robert Butler died of leukemia. Butler was the founding director of the National Institute on Aging, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and one of the nation’s leading authorities on aging and geriatrics. With the essay below by Christine Cassel, president and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine, Health... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: Timothy Jost, the author of the post below, analyzed the insurance and revenue provisions of the President’s Proposal for Health Care Reform in an earlier post. Public debate concerning the pending congressional health reform legislation has largely focused on insurance reforms, which were discussed in my first post on the president’s latest reform proposal.  But the... Read the rest of this entry »