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Total 351 results found since Jan 2013.
Calling All Wonder Women —The US Health System Needs Strong Leaders, Healthy Mothers
Legend has it that the creation of Wonder Woman—the super hero and pop culture icon who has saved us from imminent doom since World War II—was inspired by real-life women’s health activists from the early twentieth century. These were women who bucked convention and championed causes like reproductive rights and suffrage. Women who saw opportunities for collective action where others saw insurmountable obstacles. Women who refused to be relegated to second-class status and instead became the driving force for creating a more just, inclusive world.
We have come a long way since the days of Margaret Sanger and Susan B....
Source: Health Affairs Blog - October 5, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Karen Wolk Feinstein Tags: Featured GrantWatch Health Professionals Population Health Quality community health workers Disparities Health Philanthropy Jewish Healthcare Foundation Latinas maternal mortality pregnancy Women's Health Source Type: blogs
The CHRONIC Care Act Passes Senate, Obstacles Remain
Late last Tuesday night, only hours after Republican leaders announced they were pulling the Graham-Cassidy repeal and replace bill from Senate consideration, the body unanimously passed the Creating High-Quality Results and Outcomes Necessary to Improve Chronic (CHRONIC) Care Act of 2017 (the Act).
Aiming to improve care for seniors with chronic conditions, the Act first passed the Senate Finance Committee in May of this year. A Health Affairs blog post by former Senators Tom Daschle and Bill Frist, along with in-depth analysis from the Bipartisan Policy Committee, helpfully outline the need for a bipartisan effort to add...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - October 5, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Billy Wynne Tags: Costs and Spending Insurance and Coverage Medicaid and CHIP Medicare Organization and Delivery ACA ACO bipartisanship chronic CHRONIC Care Act dual eligibles Long-Term Care Medicare Advantage Telehealth Source Type: blogs
De-Medicalizing Death
There’s been an unexpected, and excellent, consequence to California’s new medical aid-in-dying law. For many terminally ill patients, immersion in the process of securing lethal drugs ultimately renders them unnecessary. How did this come about?
Passed by the California legislature in late 2015, the End of Life Option Act allows physicians to prescribe a lethal concoction of drugs to some patients with terminal illnesses who meet certain criteria. The law, commonly described as providing “medical aid in dying,” took effect on June 9, 2016. It stipulates only that the requesting patient be considered terminal (less...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - September 28, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Jessica Nutik Zitter Tags: End of Life & Serious Illness California critical care End of Life Option Act intensive care unit medical aid in dying Palliative Care Source Type: blogs
What Makes A Hospital The “Best”?
U.S. News & World Report recently published its annual “Best Hospitals” issue, which the magazine claims is the “global authority in hospital rankings.” That may be no exaggeration, given the more than two million Google results that appear with the search term “U.S. News hospital rankings” along with the flurry of self-congratulatory tweets posted and banners hung each year by the hospitals whose names appear at the top of the list. While the top-ranked hospitals were patting themselves on the back, we wondered if the magazine’s ranking system actually measures what matters to patients, or for that matte...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - September 26, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Judith Garber and Shannon Brownlee Tags: Hospitals Quality higher-value care hospital rankings U.S. News & World Report best hospital ranking Source Type: blogs
Caution Warranted As VA Incorporates ICER Value Assessments Into Formulary Management Process
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Pharmacy Benefits Management Services and the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) recently announced a collaboration in which the VA will use the ICER’s drug assessments as part of its formulary development and price negotiations. This type of relationship might be normal outside of the United States (for example, in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia), where input from governmental health technology assessment organizations is used in determining health care coverage decisions. However, in the United States—with our multipayer health care system coverin...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - September 18, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Robert Dubois Tags: Costs and Spending Drugs and Medical Innovation Insurance and Coverage Payment Policy Population Health Department of Veterans Affairs drug pricing Institute for Clinical and Economic Review pharmaceuticals quality of care Veterans' He Source Type: blogs
Policy Primers: Prescription Drug Pricing And Consumer Costs
Health Affairs has released the final set in a series of peer-reviewed health policy briefs on key issues currently shaping the prescription drug market. This third set of briefs looks at key factors that explain the many issues determining consumer out-of-pocket spending and contribute to the confusion between list prices and net prices. They are:
The 340B Drug Discount Program
The 340B drug discount program mandates the sale of outpatient prescription drugs to safety-net providers at reduced rates.
Patient Financial Support
Manufacturer-sponsored financial support helps patients afford medicines but may thwart payers’ ...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - September 14, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Health Affairs Tags: Elsewhere@ Health Affairs policy primers Source Type: blogs
A Safer Way To Legalize Marijuana
Eight US states, the District of Columbia, and the country of Uruguay have recently legalized the recreational use of marijuana, with Canada and more US states poised to do the same. The new laws include limits on youth access, operation of motor vehicles when using, and high-volume purchases or possession. However, none of the laws consider which kinds of marijuana products should and should not be legally sold.
While we take no position on the overall desirability of marijuana legalization, we propose here that policy makers in favor of it consider only permitting the sale of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) extracts intended ...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - September 8, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Rebecca Haffajee, Alex C. Liber and Kenneth E. Warner Tags: Featured Public Health drug policy legalization of marijuana Source Type: blogs
Should Value Frameworks Take A ‘ Societal Perspective ’ ?
Editor’s note: One of the authors of this post, Peter Neumann, will be discussing issues related to the post at a Health Affairs September 13 event, “Understanding The Value of Innovations In Medicine.”
In 1996, the U.S. Panel on Cost-Effectiveness in Health and Medicine recommended that analysts conducting cost-effectiveness analyses (CEAs) should perform a reference case analysis, following a set of standard methodological practices to improve comparability and quality. They further recommended that such analyses assume a societal perspective, reflecting the perspective of a decision maker allocating resourc...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - September 6, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Peter J. Neumann and Sachin Kamal-Bahl Tags: Costs and Spending Drugs and Medical Innovation Quality 2nd Panel on Cost-Effectiveness in Health and Medicine Source Type: blogs
To Combat ‘Information Blocking,’ Look To HIPAA
Back in 2009, when the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act became law, US taxpayers committed $300 million to seed nationwide health information exchange. Taxpayers also agreed to pay what turned out to be $35 billion in incentive payments for physicians and hospitals to adopt and “meaningfully use” electronic health records (EHRs). In implementing the meaningful-use program, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) required eligible providers and hospitals to attest to certain activities, including engaging in health information exchange and providing their patients ...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - August 24, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Lucia C. Savage Tags: Health IT 21st Century Cures electronic health records HIPAA information blocking medical data privacy Source Type: blogs
Making Smoking Cessation Work For People With Mental Illnesses And Other Vulnerable Populations
The prevalence of cigarette smoking among adults is now at a modern low of 15 percent, and youth rates are also down for high school seniors, with only 3.4 percent smoking daily. Yet this is not a time to become complacent and move on to other public health problems. As many as 40 million people still smoke, and half of them will die prematurely as a result. Furthermore, smoking rates remain high among the most vulnerable populations, such as people with mental illnesses or substance use disorders, necessitating policies and strategies targeted specifically at them, as well as support for tobacco control at the federal, st...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - August 23, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Steven Schroeder Tags: Featured Health Equity Population Health Public Health Behavioral Health Mental Illness smoking cessation Substance Use Disorders vulnerable populations Source Type: blogs
Did Medicaid Expansion Cause The Opioid Epidemic? There ’s Little Evidence That It Did.
Conclusion
Some Medicaid recipients who gained coverage under the ACA may have become addicted to opioids, but we find little evidence that Medicaid expansion caused aggregate drug-related death rates to increase. Future research on the opioid epidemic should develop approaches that untangle the effects of Medicaid expansion from pre-existing economic trends and the spread of accessible illegal drugs. That said, by addressing the causes of addiction and promoting appropriate treatment, Medicaid could be an important tool for policy makers in the fight against opioid abuse. In January 2016, the Centers for Medicare and Medi...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - August 23, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Andrew Goodman-Bacon and Emma Sandoe Tags: Following the ACA Medicaid and CHIP Public Health Quality Medicaid expansion opioid epidemic Source Type: blogs
The United States Can Reduce Socioeconomic Disparities By Focusing On Chronic Diseases
“It is natural to ask whether rising gaps in income might be associated with widening gaps in health and longevity between rich and poor Americans,” Jacob Bor and colleagues noted in an article in The Lancet this spring. This association is bidirectional: If someone is poor, they have a greater likelihood of having chronic illnesses such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease and associated complications. Illness also restricts financial security, especially within communities of color. The June issue of Health Affairs, Pursuing Health Equity, draws much needed attention to the need to pursue solutions that address the...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - August 17, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Kenneth Thorpe, Kathy Ko Chin, Yanira Cruz, Marjorie A. Innocent and Lillian Singh Tags: Health Equity Population Health chronic disease socioeconomic disparities Source Type: blogs
The ‘Tanning Tax’ Is A Public Health Success Story
Among the lesser known provisions in the now-rejected Republican House and Senate health care bills was a plan to eliminate an excise tax on tanning bed use. Tanning first became fashionable when Coco Chanel popularized the practice in the 1920s, making lounging outside in the sun a symbol of leisure, relaxation, and health. In the late 1970s, pioneering businesses began to offer ultraviolet (UV) radiation beds as a shortcut to fashionable tanned skin; by the 1990s, indoor UV tanning services were ubiquitous staples of the American beauty industry.
Despite its popularity, research has shown that exposure to UV radiation is...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - August 15, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Elisabeth Ryan Tags: Costs and Spending Public Health tanning tax Source Type: blogs
Policy Primers: Public Coverage And Prescription Drug Pricing
Health Affairs has released the next set in a series of peer-reviewed health policy briefs on key issues currently shaping the prescription drug market. Each brief offers a short, accessible overview of the issue and a close examination of how it affects pricing.
This second set of briefs tell the story of different prescription drug coverage mechanisms (who pays whom and how much), how they interact with other pricing measures, and what future reforms might look like. They are:
MEDICARE PART B
The Medicare Part B “buy and bill” payment structure for physician-administered drugs also influences private-sector prices.
M...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - August 10, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Health Affairs Tags: Elsewhere@ Health Affairs Featured Health Policy Briefs Source Type: blogs
To Speed Access To Compassionate Use, Look Beyond The FDA
In mid-July, the nonpartisan research arm of the federal government, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), released its long-awaited verdict on how the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is handling compassionate use. As anyone who saw Dallas Buyers Club knows, compassionate use (also known as pre-approval access and expanded access) is when a drug company allows a patient who has no other treatment options to try a drug that is still in development and not FDA approved for use or sale. These patients are generally too sick to participate in a clinical trial—which has inclusion and exclusion criteria to try t...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - August 10, 2017 Category: Health Management Authors: Alison Bateman-House Tags: Drugs and Medical Innovation Population Health Quality Compassionate Use expanded access Food and Drug Administration right-to-try laws Source Type: blogs
