Americans will soon be hearing more about a new type of entity: accountable care organizations. That’s because the health care reform legislation enacted earlier this year authorizes Medicare to contract with accountable care organizations, or ACOs, to provide care for enrollees. Accountable care organizations are designed to focus on delivering care to a particular population  Read More →

By ROB LAMBERTS, MD I was planning on leaving behind the seriousness of the past few posts and going back to my usual inane writing, but some of the comments have made it too hard for me to keep quiet….  Read More →

The small waiting room was packed with young mothers holding teary-eyed toddlers, older folks with resting tremors and oxygen tanks, and an obese man just stepping in from a smoke. I’m a family physician about to share my afternoon with each of them, in a working-class western Pennsylvania town. Walking quickly through the room on  Read More →

Texas Republican Rep. Michael Burgess took a strong stand on the new health care reform law yesterday morning , arguing that opponents must stop its implementation by targeting its funding. He also predicted that there would not be a permanent fix to the Medicare sustainable growth rate until at least after the 2010 election. Burgess, a licensed obstetrician and the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee, told attendees... 

The latest health policy brief from Health Affairs and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation , released June 25, examines the issue of Medicare physician payment. Specifically, the brief addresses the controversy surrounding the sustainable growth rate (SGR) mechanism, which ties physician payment rates to Medicare spending for physician services and the growth rate of the overall economy. Amidst fears that physicians would stop treating Medicare... 

By MARGALIT GUR-ARIE As we move to Electronic Health Records (EHR), the debates over security and privacy are becoming more frequent and more poignant. We of course have HIPAA laws on the books and ONC has a Tiger team assembled…  Read More →

Can the recently enacted Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act succeed in reducing the growth rate of health care spending? It must, David Cutler said in an article in the June issue of Health Affairs   and at a June 7 Washington D.C. briefing on the issue. Video and slides from the briefing are available on the Health Affairs Web site , and an …  Read More →

By MAGGIE MAHAR Summary: Opponents of reform will continue to pretend that at some point in the future, “Obama-care” will mean drastic across-the-board cuts in reimbursements to doctors who take Medicare patients, forcing many to abandon their patients. The Senate’s…  Read More →

By GLENN LAFFEL, MD, PhD The best electronic health record on the planet isn’t going to help anybody unless a physician uses it. The HITECH incentive scheme should enhance the woefully poor EHR uptake rates among US providers, as should…  Read More →

By ROB LAMBERTS, MD He came in for his regular blood pressure and cholesterol check. On the review of systems sheet he circled “depression.” “I see you circled depression,” I said after dealing with his routine problems. ”What’s up?” “I…  Read More →

Among both supporters and opponents of the recently passed health reform legislation, there is widespread agreement on the necessity of revamping the health care delivery system. But our current system of educating physicians and other medical providers is likely not up to the challenge of producing professionals who will lead the needed changes. So said Medicare Payment Advisory Commission Executive Director Mark Miller at a June 15 briefing.... 

As a result of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003, physician reimbursements for outpatient treatment of cancer patients were lowered. In the first study to examine how these reductions affected the likelihood and setting of chemotherapy treatments for Medicare beneficiaries, researchers looked at patients recently diagnosed with lung cancer and found that they received more, rather than…  Read More →

In today’s Washington Post , Darryl Fears writes about looming shortages of physicians and nurses. One of the primary sources quoted in the article is Peter Buerhaus of Vanderbilt, who says the nation is looking at a future shortage of about 300,000 nurses. Readers interested in more detail on Buerhaus’s nursing workforce projections can consult his Health Affairs article from June of last year, cowritten with David Auerbach of the... 

This week’s Health Wonk Review kicks off with posts debating the issues of residents’ sleep deprivation and long physician work weeks. It then moves to one of the hot-button health policy  issues of the past week – namely, why the New York Times took on the Dartmouth Atlas and studies of variations in medical practice. Tinker Ready of the blog,  Boston Health News , hosts this edition of the Health Wonk Review, a biweekly round-up... 

Having been blessed by the new health reform legislation, accountable care organizations (ACOs) are a hot topic in the health policy world, as evidenced by the just-concluded and well-attended National Accountable Health Care Organization Summit (cosponsored by Health Affairs ) in Washington, D.C. Health Affairs has published much of the research and thinking related to ACOs. For example, in the May 2010 issue of the journal, Mark McClellan,...