All Articles In 'Transparency of Performance'
Medicare Payment Reform: Post-Acute Provider Reimbursement
The term “post-acute care” (PAC) covers a range of services patients receive after a hospital stay. Skilled nursing facilities, home health care agencies, long-term care hospitals, and inpatient rehabilitation hospitals all provide post-acute care. PAC providers [...]
Patient Engagement to Lower Health Costs and Improve Outcomes
It’s not uncommon for a patient to be confused or overwhelmed by a diagnosis or treatment plan. Complicated medical procedures or decisions can overwhelm patients to the point that they feel that they cannot, or should [...]
Physician Payment Reform: Preparing for Value-Based Reimbursement
Primary care is shifting to payment based on providing higher quality, lower cost health care. New payment models – such as patient-centered medical homes (PCMH) – replace or supplement traditional fee-for-service payments with per-member per-month payments, [...]
Medicare-Medicaid Dual Eligibles: Measuring Quality of Special Needs Plans and State Demonstrations
Medicare-Medicaid dual eligibles are often held up as a prime case for the need for better care management to reduce health costs and spending while improving quality. But doing so can be challenging. Most dual eligibles [...]
Payment Reform Models: Employers Explore Population-Based and Bundled Payment
For the past several years, major payers in U.S. health care have experimented with new payment models that create incentives to control unnecessary health care spending. The traditional fee-for-service model for health insurance does not give [...]
22 Proven Patient Safety Strategies
Poor quality of care and preventable medical errors are a major cause of high costs and patient suffering. The opportunities for improvement are considerable. In addition, as states and health plans gear up for Health Insurance [...]
5 Causes of Wasteful Health Care Spending
A painful fact about the U.S. health system is that roughly one third of health costs and spending are wasted. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that wasted health spending [...]
Hospital Quality Reporting and EHRs: Inpatient Quality Data Reporting Using Electronic Health Records
By making hospital quality of care information public, the Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting (IQR) program is designed to help patients make informed decisions and encourage hospitals and physicians to improve the quality of inpatient care. Under the [...]
Seven Ideas to Reduce Costs and Improve Outcomes in Medicare and Medicaid
Medicare and Medicaid spending will exceed $1 trillion in FY 2013. Together, the two programs now serve about 113 million Americans – over a third of the population. Policymakers in Washington and the states face a daunting [...]
Healthcare-Associated Infections: Strategies to Reduce HAIs in Hospitals and Other Facilities
Healthcare-associated infections (HAI) contribute significantly to U.S. health costs and spending. They can be a major problem in hospitals, with one in every 20 hospitalized patients contracting a healthcare-associated infection, according to the Centers for Disease [...]
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