Health Care Delivery

States increasingly use managed care for Medicaid enrollees, yet evidence of its impact on healthcare outcomes is mixed. This research studies county-level Medicaid managed care penetration and healthcare outcomes among nonelderly disabled and nondisabled enrollees.

Researchers from the University of Washington examined drinking patterns down to the county level, and found wide disparities within state borders. This suggests that solutions to problem drinking must be found locally.

Avalere, partnering with the National Comprehensive Care Network, surveyed 20 cancer centers and found that 75% of respondents were covered by at least "some" of the exchange plans in their state.

Accountable care organizations were created under the Affordable Care Act to improve healthcare delivery to a defined population. As writers in the new issue of Evidence-Based Oncology discuss, while palliative care exists to raise the quality of life for the seriously ill, it can also speak to the value equation of delivering care that patients want at a lower cost.

Oncologists are slightly less satisfied with their specialty than they were a few years ago, according to the fifth consecutive annual Medscape report.

The system lets consumers pay cash at store register, while clerks scan bar codes sent to their cell phones. The system replaces these consumers sending in money orders each month.

The Kaiser Health Tracking Poll found Americans strongly support ensuring that those with chronic conditions like cancer, HIV, and mental illness can have access to affordable drugs, and this sentiment was shared across partisan lines.

Fifteen states are betting they can convince more doctors to accept the growing number of patients covered by Medicaid with a simple incentive: more money.

In its third year, Patient-Centered Diabetes Care, which took place April 16-17, 2015, in Boston, showed how new payment models, new therapies, and new approaches to patient engagement are changing care for persons with diabetes. The American Journal of Managed Care and Joslin Diabetes Center presented this year's meeting.

Missouri already spends $1.2 billion on Medicaid managed care in less than half its counties. The new plan would extend managed care to all Medicaid clients except the blind, disabled, and elderly. Meanwhile, in North Carolina, the CEO of the Medical Society argued against moving Medicaid to managed care, citing problems in other states.

Despite its rocky launch, the federal health insurance exchange did better than the exchanges run by individual states at both enrolling new people in Obamacare and hanging onto previous enrollees, according to a recent analysis.

The national divide over the Affordable Care Act is beginning to affect Americans' access to medical care and perhaps even their ability to pay medical bills, a new study of the country's 4 largest states suggests.

In Montana, 13 Republicans helped give a Medicaid expansion bill a solid majority to send it back to the Senate for reconciliation. A bill signing could come by next week. In Florida, Governor Rick Scott appeared to reverse his 2013 position that he could not deny the uninsured access to care.

Although the Affordable Care Act has helped more people gain access to healthcare coverage, including those with pre-existing conditions such as cancer, the survey by the Cancer Support Community found that the cost of care is still too high for many cancer patients.

The amount of care provided in California emergency departments for non-injuries, like complex, chronic conditions has increased, according to a study led by the University of California, San Francisco.

With 6 million people enrolling in their benefits on a private health insurance, the market has seen annual growth in excess of 100% since 2013, and forecasts don't show the trend slowing, according Accenture.

New analysis from Avalere finds that while exchanges have succeeded in enrolling very low-income individuals, they continue to struggle to attract middle and higher income enrollees.

About 36,000 people have taken advantage of a second chance to sign up for coverage under the president's healthcare law, the Obama administration said Wednesday.

The Affordable Care Act enacted a number of new taxes, but one hits the small business community harder than others: the health insurance tax.

Although those opposing the Affordable Care Act have decried the burdensome nature of the individual mandate, a recent proposal developed by Republicans seeks to address the same problem as the ACA's mandate and would impose strong penalties on the uninsured.

To mark its 20th year of publication, The American Journal of Managed Care has invited guest contributors to comment on the state of healthcare from their perspective. This month, Karen Ignagni, MBA, president and CEO of America's Health Insurance Plans and consistently rated as one of healthcare's most important voices, writes how health plans are supporting value-based care and promoting consumer choice.

A new study published by the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics finds that reimbursement approaches based on cost-per-quality-adjusted-life-year measures rather than drug effectiveness may limit access to innovative cancer treatments.

A provision of the ACA that calls for the federal government to cover a higher share of Texas' administrative costs will help cover $102 million of a $338 million shortfall in Medicaid costs.