Quality and Safety

Increased adoption of consumer-directed health plans (CDHPs) and an increased emphasis on employee health management programs helped U.S. employers hold their health benefit cost increases to an average of 4.1 percent in 2012, the lowest average annual increase since 1997, according to a new survey from global consulting firm Mercer.

I recently came across an interesting blog post from David Fried of Software Advice which was geared around making the most of patients’ time as they sat in doctors’ waiting rooms.

In a new study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, it was found that after examining patients suffering from pneumonia and heart failure, a broad range of social factors affect the risk of post-discharge readmission and mortality.

The message that home- and community-based care is more cost effective than institutional care has been touted by federal and local governments and those within the healthcare community, but a new comparative effectiveness review of long-term care of older adults receiving home- and community-based services versus care in institutions concludes that there is not enough evidence in the literature to determine cost effectiveness.

A new report indicates that while U.S. primary care physicians still trail their counterparts in other countries in their use of electronic medical records (EMRs), they are making progress and are finding more efficiencies through EMR use.

As many as 31 million Americans now receive healthcare through an accountable care organization (ACO) according to a recent report from industry consulting company Oliver Wyman.

The 2012 HomeCare Elite, a list of the top performing home health agencies in the United States, was announced Tuesday.

Healthcare reform is fundamentally changing the way hospitals are run. A combination of crushing costs, government edicts and fierce competition for the millions of newly insured patients that will result from federal healthcare legislation is putting the patient front and center.

Emerging evidence suggests that patients and their surrogates frequently engage in massive denial when it comes to prognosis near the end of life. While understandable – denial is often the way that people remove the “less” from “hopeless” – it can lead to terrible decisions, with bad consequences for both the individual patient and society.

In an effort to control costs and get people covered by health insurance, the Affordable Care Act offers a number of options for covering low-income people. Among those options is the Basic Health Program, which some say will save money and others say will kill health insurance exchanges.