Health Affairs

Editor’s note: For more on the adoption of electronic health systems, see these recent Health Affairs articles by Decker and coauthors, DesRoches and coauthors, and Hsiao and coauthors, which were discussed at an April 25 event. Since the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed in 2009, healthcare professionals, researchers, analysts and policy makers have been... Read the rest of this entry »

In 2011 the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services began offering incentives to providers who demonstrated “meaningful use” of electronic health records (EHRs). With this program well underway, how well is health information technology implementation progressing? What are the differences in adoption rates among health care providers? To address aspects of health information technology adoption... Read the rest of this entry »

On Wednesday, April 25, Health Affairs will hold a briefing on the subjects of recent trends in health information technology adoption among US health care providers; eligibility for federal incentives to support that adoption; and demonstration of meaningful use. The forum coincides with the release of three “Web First” papers from Health Affairs, as well... Read the rest of this entry »

Several papers in the March issue of Health Affairs expose some of the challenges with reporting information about health care quality to the public, including the shortcomings of hospital reporting, the importance of framing quality information in ways consumers can understand and apply to real-world decisions, and the need for more consumer-relevant measures.  Each paper... Read the rest of this entry »

Tim Jost’s analysis of the final rule on health insurance exchanges tops the most-read list for March for Health Affairs Blog. The Health Affairs article and follow-on blog post by Danny McCormick and colleagues on the effect of physicians’ access to electronic imaging and tests on further testing generated much attention and debate. And the... Read the rest of this entry »

American health care has a love-hate relationship with the venerable International Classification of Diseases (ICD),” begins a commentary released yesterday as a Web First by Health Affairs. Since 1977 the United States has relied on the ICD, Ninth Revision, for both research and billing, and has planned to adopt the ICD, Tenth Revision (ICD-10-CM), this... Read the rest of this entry »

Tinker Ready offers a great Saint Patrick’s Day Health Wonk Review at — where else? — Boston Health News. Tinker provides a nice selection of health policy blogging, including a Health Affairs Blog post by Danny McCormick and colleagues on the effect of electronic access by physicians to previous test results. Check out that post... Read the rest of this entry »

Mission creep is the expansion of a project or mission beyond its original goals, often after initial successes. Mission creep is usually considered undesirable due to the dangerous path of each success breeding more ambitious attempts, only stopping when a final, often catastrophic, failure occurs. Health Information Technology (HIT or health IT) is one of... Read the rest of this entry »

On February 24, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) issued the proposed “stage 2” rules for the meaningful use of electronic health records.   Stage 2 unequivocally lays out three bold requirements that are sure to be transformative to the United... Read the rest of this entry »

Our recent Health Affairs article linking increased test ordering to electronic access to results has elicited heated responses, including a blog post by Farzad Mostashari, National Coordinator for Health IT.  Some of the assertions in his blog post are mistaken.  Some take us to task for claims we never made, or for studying only some... Read the rest of this entry »

Adoption of health information technology (IT) throughout the health care system is “on the march,” according to Farzad Mostashari, the national coordinator for health IT. Nearly 2,000 US hospitals and more than 41,000 doctors have now met the standards for achieving meaningful use of health IT, and have received $3.1 billion in federal incentive payments... Read the rest of this entry »

How much health spending is sustainable? Charles Roehrig’s post addressing this question heads the list of most-read Health Affairs Blog posts for February. Next on the list is a post contrasting Medicare and commercial insurance by Diane Archer and Theodore Marmor. Also in the top ten are posts by Larry Wolf and Ashish Jha examining... Read the rest of this entry »

Despite the widely held assumption that physicians having computer access to patients’ test results will reduce testing, doctors who have such access to tests in the ambulatory care setting are more likely to order imaging and lab tests. That’s the finding of a study in the March issue of the Health Affairs, released today. The... Read the rest of this entry »

On his blog Managed Care Matters, Joe Paduda hosts the latest edition of the Health Wonk Review. Joe includes Health Affairs Blog posts from Ashish Jha and Larry Wolf analyzing the proposed Stage 2 rules on meaningful use of electronic health records. Take a look at these and all the great posts Joe offers.

Editor’s note: For more on the Stage 2 proposed rules defining meaningful use of electronic health records, see Larry Wolf’s Health Affairs Blog post. Late in the day on February 23, 2012, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released the preliminary rules for Stage 2 Meaningful Use.  For those not deep in the... Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s note: For more on the Stage 2 proposed rules defining meaningful use of electronic health records, see Ashish Jha’s Health Affairs Blog post. There will be many blogs and news reports, on Health Affairs Blog and elsewhere, about the very-soon-to-be-released Stage 2 proposed rules on the Meaningful Use of electronic health records (EHRs). This... Read the rest of this entry »

With unsustainably high costs and tremendous gaps in quality and patient safety, the health care system is ripe with opportunities for improvement. For years, many have seen quality measurement as a means to drive needed change. Private and public payers, public health departments, and independent accreditation organizations have asked health care providers to report on... Read the rest of this entry »

The most-read Health Affairs Blog post for January was Tim Jost’s examination of the first set of briefs filed before the Supreme Court in the litigation over the Constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. The full top-ten list for the month also includes Jerald Winakur’s post on disruptions experienced by many patients during care transitions... Read the rest of this entry »

Despite more than a decade of national focus on patient safety, medical errors and other adverse events occur in one-third of hospital admissions — as much as ten times more than some previous estimates have indicated, according to the most-read Health Affairs article published in 2011. The study, by David Classen and coauthors, appeared in... Read the rest of this entry »

With the passage of the HITECH Act, there has been a push towards the broad and meaningful use of electronic health records.  Critics argue that electronic health record systems are not yet adequately developed.  The systems are ill-designed and clunky; poorly integrated into clinical workflow; and often times create more work without improving the quality of... Read the rest of this entry »