Health affairs
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Comparative Study
Medicare's Bundled Payment initiative: most hospitals are focused on a few high-volume conditions.
The Bundled Payments for Care Improvement initiative is a federally funded innovation model mandated by the Affordable Care Act. It is designed to help transition Medicare away from fee-for-service payments and toward bundling a single payment for an episode of acute care in a hospital and related postacute care in an appropriate setting. While results from the initiative will not be available for several years, current data can help provide critical early insights. ⋯ We found no significant differences in episode-based spending between participating and nonparticipating hospitals. Postacute care explains the largest variation in overall episode-based spending, signaling an opportunity to align incentives across providers. However, the focus on a few selected clinical conditions and the high degree of integration that already exists between enrolled hospitals and postacute care providers may limit the generalizability of bundled payment across the Medicare system.
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Comparative Study
Safety-net hospitals more likely than other hospitals to fare poorly under Medicare's value-based purchasing.
Medicare's value-based purchasing (VBP) program potentially puts safety-net hospitals at a financial disadvantage compared to other hospitals. In 2014, the second year of the program, patient mortality measures were added to the VBP program's algorithm for assigning penalties and rewards. We examined whether the inclusion of mortality measures in the second year of the program had a disproportionate impact on safety-net hospitals nationally. ⋯ In 2014, 63 percent of safety-net hospitals versus 51 percent of all other sample hospitals received payment rate reductions under the program. However, safety-net hospitals' performance on mortality measures was comparable to that of other hospitals, with an average VBP survival score of thirty-two versus thirty-one among other hospitals. Although safety-net hospitals are still more likely than other hospitals to fare poorly under the VBP program, increasing the weight given to mortality in the VBP payment algorithm would reduce this disadvantage.
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State prescription drug monitoring programs are common tools intended to reduce prescription drug abuse and diversion, or the nonmedical use of a prescribed drug. The success of these programs depends largely upon physicians' awareness and use of them. We conducted a nationally representative mail survey of 1,000 practicing primary care physicians in 2014 to characterize their attitudes toward and awareness and use of prescription drug monitoring programs. ⋯ We identified several barriers that may prevent greater use of the programs, including the time-consuming nature of information retrieval and the lack of an intuitive format for data provided by the programs. These results suggest that the majority of US primary care physicians are aware of and use prescription drug monitoring programs at least on occasion, although many did not access these programs routinely. To increase the use of the programs in clinical practice, states should consider implementing legal mandates, investing in prescriber education and outreach, and taking measures to enhance ease of access to and use of the programs.
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On its twentieth anniversary, Taiwan's National Health Insurance (NHI) stands out as a high-performing single-payer national health insurance system that provides universal health coverage to Taiwan's 23.4 million residents based on egalitarian ethical principles. The system has encountered myriad challenges over the years, including serious financial deficits. Taiwan's government managed those crises through successive policy adjustments and reforms. ⋯ It faces challenges, including balancing the system's budget, improving the quality of health care, and achieving greater cost-effectiveness. However, Taiwan's experience with the NHI shows that a single-payer approach can work and control health care costs effectively. There are lessons for the United States in how to expand coverage rapidly, manage incremental adjustments to the health system, and achieve freedom of choice.
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The pressure to contain health expenditures is unprecedented. In England a flattening of the health budget but increasing demand led the National Health Service (NHS) to seek reductions in health expenditures of 17 percent over four years. The spending cuts were to be achieved through improvements in service quality and efficiency, including reducing the use of ineffective, overused, or inappropriate procedures. ⋯ However, changes in the rates of all examined procedures varied widely across commissioning organizations. Our findings highlight some of the challenges of making major budget cuts in health care. Reducing ineffective spending remains a significant opportunity for the US health care system, and the English experience may hold valuable lessons.