A payer-sponsored pay-for-performance incentive for smoking status documentation prompted implementation of a systemwide electronic reminder and improved documentation among all healthcare system patients.
Antiretroviral drugs have replaced hospitalization and other services as the most costly component of HIV care, except in patients with especially advanced HIV.
The authors aimed to examine whether participation in Medicare managed care, compared with fee-for-service, has any effects on racial/ethnic disparities in diabetes care and healthcare expenditures among older adults.
Patients are receptive to diverse strategies to screen for cost barriers but want participatory decision making to address cost-efficacy tradeoffs.
Greater Medicare managed care benefit levels reduce both the likelihood and magnitude of Veterans Health Administration pharmacy use by Medicare dually enrolled veterans.
This literature review evaluates the impact of restricted access to atypical antipsychotic drugs in individuals with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.
High-cost patients are only modestly concentrated in specific hospitals and healthcare markets.
Nurse practitioner prescribers exhibited a high rate of contact with pharmaceutical industry promotional activities.
Health insurance plans serve a critical role in public health emergencies. The authors queried plans about issues related to emergency preparedness: infrastructure, adaptability, connectedness, and best practices.
Pilot testing demonstrates the use of a novel, personal health record—based framework used in primary care settings may improve presence and quality of advance care planning documentation in the electronic health record.
Anticoagulation clinics in an integrated healthcare system differed widely in their organization and management, but these differences were not consistently related to their performance.
Systolic blood pressure control was not maintained in a large proportion of patients after the end of participation in a hypertension intervention study.
Super-utilizers place a significant clinical and financial burden on the healthcare system. The authors investigated the effectiveness of community navigators in reducing hospital utilization and costs.
Substitutive Hospital at Home care for 4 common conditions is associated with cost savings.
The authors report overutilization of telemetry monitoring in a community setting, increasing the cost of health care and potential harm to patients with unnecessary interventions.
In order to encourage dissemination, this commentary is freely available in PLoS Medicine, and will also be published in Medical Decision Making, Croatian Medical Journal, The Cochrane Library, Trials, and Journal of Clinical Epidemiology.
Health information technologies can be implemented without impact on patient satisfaction. The lacking synergistic relationship should be concerning to stakeholders for optimizing costs and quality.
We found that, in 2008, variations across Texas in total spending and inpatient utilization are similar in Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas and Medicare.