Policy

In this segment, Dr. Farzad Mostashari highlights both the financial and non-financial challenges providers face when implementing electronic medical records.

Patrick P. Gleason, PharmD, Director of Clinical Outcomes Assessment, Prime Therapeutics, discusses the rates at which patients will not follow a prescribed therapeutic plan due to cost-sharing. Specifically, patients starting multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and oral oncology medication regimens with more than a $100 cost-share will be less likely to start the drug therapy.

ProvenHealth Navigator, Geisinger's version of advanced patient-centered medical homes, is associated with significant savings in total cost of care over time.

How Much Do We Spend and How Can We Spend It Better?

Randell "RJ" Correia, PharmD, Senior Vice President, Pharmacy Services, Optum Rx, addresses the rapid rise of specialty pharmacy spending. Dr. Correia discusses the possible complications health reform exchanges may cause and the impact they will have on the future of pharmacy benefit drug management.

With so many factors at play, it can be difficult to assess the true impact of generic drugs on healthcare costs.

Health Plans Continue to Seek Methods to Curtail Cancer Costs

Bimal Patel, PharmD, MS, Director, Health Outcomes Research, MedImpact Healthcare Systems, Inc., discusses MedImpact's work to identify, analyze, and evaluate generic medications that have become significantly expensive, and effective strategies for managing these costs.

To set priorities for quality improvement in trauma triage, we compared the cost-effectiveness of current practice with interventions to improve physician adherence to clinical guidelines.

Hospital readmission rates in Medicare Advantage plans are considerably lower than those in Medicare's traditional fee-for-service program, after accounting for differences in risk.

Analysis of studies of worksite wellness programs suggested mixed impact on health-related behaviors and cost, with insufficient evidence regarding absenteeism and mental health.

Use of granulocyte colony-stimulating factor plus plerixafor for stem cell mobilization is cost-effective in pretreated patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we found that hospitalists reduce hospital length of stay without increasing costs.

Higher patient cost-sharing is associated with a lower likelihood of treatment augmentation in patients with depression who are treated with antidepressants.