Editor’s Note: Dr. Patchin wrote the blog post below in her official capacity as Chair of the Board of Trustees of the American Medical Association.
Health Affairs recently published an interview with Kerry Weems, former acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. In the interview, inaccurate statements were made about the role of the [...]

Editor’s Note: Below is the transcript of a Health Affairs Blog Roundtable on Atul Gawande’s New Yorker article on McAllen, Texas, and variations in health care costs. The roundtable used the article as a jumping-off point for a wide-ranging discussion on the policy implications of cost variations, delivery system reform, and other topics. Participants included Robert [...]

Federal support for graduate medical education (GME) training positions has been capped for more than a decade and it is no secret that the country’s teaching hospitals are restive. They want “more cap.” A number of bills have been introduced in the House and Senate proposing an increase in the Medicare funded GME cap by [...]

Last week’s New Yorker article by Atul Gawande highlighted the phenomenally high variations in cost of medical care and services between regions in the United States, specifically focusing on McAllen, Texas. Gawande’s spotlight on McAllen was based on many studies of our health care system. For Gawande’s readers, we would like to point you to [...]

The recent confusion surrounding the health care industry’s statement about reducing the growth in health care costs by 1.5 percentage points annually — it is a goal, the industry clarified, not a year-by-year target — underscores the need to put mechanisms in place to ensure that the industry’s spending growth target is met. Nonetheless, I [...]

Health Affairs and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) are pleased to announce a new series of Health Policy Briefs aimed at providing clear, accessible overviews of timely and important health policy topics. The first brief explores the current debate over cutting payments to “Medicare Advantage” plans – the privately run health plans that now [...]

Health reform tops the most-read list for April on the Health Affairs Blog. A series of posts on health IT looked at building the new technology into the delivery system, effect on patient-physician relationships, and more. Additional commenting is always welcome.

No Direction Home: A Primary Care Physician Questions The Medical Home Model by Caroline Poplin
Health [...]

Editor’s Note: Health Affairs is proud to be a media partner for the Health 2.0 Meets Ix conference, which will take place April 22 and 23 in Boston, Massachusetts. As part of the lead-up to the conference, which will focus on the interplay between the Health 2.0 and information therapy (Ix) movements, Health Affairs Blog [...]

A public-private alliance known as the Commercial Aviation Safety Team (CAST) has greatly improved aviation safety. A similar alliance among health care stakeholders could reduce medication and device errors and wrong-site surgeries, renowned patient safety expert Peter Pronovost and coauthors say in an article published April 7 on the Health Affairs Web site. Pronovost is a [...]

Editor’s Note: Health Affairs is proud to be a media partner for the Health 2.0 Meets Ix conference, which will take place April 22 and 23 in Boston, Massachusetts. As part of the lead-up to the conference, which will focus on the interplay between the Health 2.0 and information therapy (Ix) movements, Health Affairs Blog and [...]

The train has left the station. Everyone is on board: health policy leaders both public, like the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), and private, like the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and the Commonwealth Fund; influential medical societies like the American College of Physicians and the American College [...]

Given the strong emphasis on medical specialization and the beleaguered state of primary care, Democratic and Republican policymakers and a host of private-sector interests are promoting the resurrection of the generalist doctor in the physician workforce. But most graduating medical students who matched to residency positions this year have not yet gotten the message. And [...]

Editor’s Note: There is widespread agreement that the nation’s primary care infrastructure is woefully inadequate. For example, at the Senate hearing on his nomination to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, Sen. Tom Daschle spoke of health care as a pyramid, with primary care at the bottom and specialized care at the top. He [...]

Editor’s Note: There is widespread agreement that the nation’s primary care infrastructure is woefully inadequate. For example, at the Senate hearing on his nomination to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, Sen. Tom Daschle spoke of health care as a pyramid, with primary care at the bottom and specialized care at the top. He [...]

Michelle Obama has made it clear that, unlike Hillary Rodham Clinton, she will not be a first lady who regularly mixes it up with public policy issues that vex her husband’s administration. But, invaribly, she will be drawn into issues on subjects of personal interest or that derive from her varied professional career as a [...]

We are pleased to announce the “most-read” Health Affairs journal articles published in 2008. The number 1 article has topped 61,000 pageviews to date. The next two articles, which were published in September, analyzed the presidential candidates’ health plans. All articles below are open to all readers for the next 2 weeks—through January 28, 2009.

Measuring [...]

By the fourth sentence of the preface to The Silent World of Doctor and Patient, Jay Katz has quietly issued a startling challenge to a fundamental principle of the doctor-patient relationship. He writes:
It took time before I appreciated fully the oddity of physicians’ insistence that patients follow doctors’ orders. During my socialization as a physician [...]

Ever since an 18-year-old New York woman died tragically in 1984 under the care of medical residents who—in the view of her family—were overworked and undersupervised, the subject of the duty hours of physician trainees has simmered in the academic medical community and, on occasion, among public policymakers. Now, as the consequence of a new [...]

I visited Cuba last week for an international conference entitled “Medical Education for the 21st Century: Teaching Health for Equity.” Havana is beautiful, dilapidated, and lively. Rickety, vintage Buicks and three-wheeled “coco taxis” ply the streets. Spectacular and decrepit 19th century buildings are being lovingly refurbished by workmen using block and tackle to haul concrete [...]

Editor’s Note: The November-December issue of Health Affairs contains essays by a physician and a medical interpreter on the challenges and perils of navigating language gaps between medical providers and patients in the absence of a trained medical interpreter. The essays appear in the journal’s “Narrative Matters” section, which is supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
The post [...]