According to the first national study of hospital board chairs linked to quality performance, just half the boards rated quality of care as one of their two top priorities and only a minority reported receiving training in quality.  The study was published today on the Health Affairs Web site.
“Most boards have primarily focused on financial issues, mistakenly [...]

In many countries, primary care clinicians serve as the foundation for health care and the “gatekeepers” for more specialized referrals. A new international survey of primary care physicians in eleven countries finds that American doctors are significantly behind many of their counterparts elsewhere in providing access to high-quality care and use of health information technology, [...]

On October 13, the day the Senate Finance Committee passed its version of health reform, the Health Affairs Blog held a roundtable on public opinion and health reform. Participants included Bob Blendon, professor of health policy and political analysis at Harvard; Chad Bohnert, director of marketing and e-commerce at Zogby International; Mollyann Brodie, vice president, public [...]

Editor’s Note: What follows is the transcript of a roundtable on public opinion and health reform that took place on October 13,  the day the Senate Finance Committee approved its version of health reform legislation. Participants included Bob Blendon, professor of health policy and political analysis at Harvard; Chad Bohnert, director of marketing and e-commerce at [...]

Posts on public opinion about health reform and how to achieve high-quality, low-cost health care topped the Health Affairs Blog most-read list for October. Additional comment on these and all posts is always welcome.

Can Slumping Support For Health Care Reform Be Turned Around?
by S. Ward Casscells, Hiliary Critchley, Thomas Amoroso, James Tyll, and John Zogby
Are [...]

Narrative Matters, the personal essay section of Health Affairs, publishes firsthand stories that explore the personal, ethical, and moral issues of delivering or receiving health care—and that carry a health policy message within them.  The essays are popular with the journal’s readers (many say that Narrative Matters is what they turn to first), and they [...]

For some of the best recent health policy blogging, check out last week’s “Halloween” edition of the Health Wonk Review. Among the articles highlighted is a piece from the Health Affairs Blog by Arnold Milstein and coauthors on replicating higher-value care models.

Responding to the HIV/AIDS pandemic and tackling so-called neglected tropical diseases are the focus of the November/December 2009 edition of Health Affairs, released today. The articles, by leading global health experts from around the world, show that although these challenges differ dramatically, rising to meet them could save millions of lives.
Health Affairs will highlight the issue’s [...]

Editor’s Note: Tim Jost wrote 3 posts analyzing the House health reform bill HR 3962. The first looks at financing reforms, the second post delves into the public option, health insurance exchanges, and more.
In this final post, I will explore the remaining 1600 pages of HR 3962.  Although these provisions have received less attention (except [...]

In my first post, I described the major features and basic approach of HR 3962, as well as the provisions of the bill that would go into effect more or less immediately.  This post will look more closely at some of the bill’s basic insurance reform elements.  In a final post, I will discuss the [...]

Both the new House health reform bill and the Senate Finance Committee bill, despite their best efforts, have to impose some taxes on some taxpayers; they cannot get all of a trillion dollars of subsidies for insurance out of Medicare.  But they differ on what and whom to tax: the House proposes to tax well-off [...]

HR 3962, the Affordable Health Care for Americans Act, hit the House floor with a thud Thursday morning at 1990 pages, almost double the size of the bill we last saw before the Energy and Commerce hearings at the end of July.  The bill incorporates, of course, amendments from the House jurisdictional committees, but also [...]

On October 12 America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) released a commissioned report by Price Waterhouse Cooper (PWC), “Potential Impact of Health Reform on the Cost of Private Health Insurance Coverage.”   The study reported that health care reform as envisioned by the Senate Finance Committee would raise the cost of private health insurance by 23 percent [...]

Narrative Matters recently brought together 80 writers, journalists, and academics to celebrate the Tenth Anniversary of Narrative Matters.  There was much to celebrate: over 150 Narratives published in Health Affairs that covered a spectrum of human stories set in the increasingly institutionalized health care system.  We came to celebrate the power of stories and storytelling in the [...]

A new study published yesterday in Health Affairs finds that hospitals that disproportionately care for low-income patients are falling behind in adopting electronic health records (EHRs). This is the first paper to use national data comparing EHR adoption between acute care providers primarily caring for the poor and those serving more general populations.
Ashish Jha of the [...]

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) answered some important questions at his Capitol Hill news conference today: The health reform bill he will send to the Senate floor will include a public health insurance plan with a state opt-out provision, and as a result the much-courted Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) — the lone Republican to vote in committee for [...]

Congress is debating provisions of health reform bills that would considerably revamp segments of the private health insurance market. Focused on health insurance for individuals and small businesses, the changes would end the commonplace practice in these parts of the insurance market of using health status to set premiums or deny coverage.
A new Health Policy [...]

As Congress prepares for an historic floor debate over health care reform, those of us who have worked in the trenches to measure and improve the quality of care are watching with a mix of anticipation and concern. Reform has the potential to significantly improve the transparency and, ultimately, the quality of our system of [...]

Editor’s note: Health Affairs Founding Editor John Iglehart recently interviewed American Hospital Association CEO Rich Umbdenstock. The wide-ranging conversation, transcribed below, touched on the ongoing health reform debate, the evolving role of hospitals in community health, the effect of the economy on hospital finances, the evolution of integrated medicine, patient safety, workforce concerns, and other [...]

Editor’s Note: In addition to Arnold Milstein and Pranav Kothari (pictures and bios above), coauthors of this post include Rushika Fernandopulle MD, MPP, of Harvard Medical School and Renaissance Health in Boston, and Theresa Helle of the Boeing Company in Seattle. For more on health care delivery system innovations and reforms, see the Sept-Oct 2009 issue of Health Affairs, [...]