The Commonwealth Fund Connection serves as a roundup of Fund publications, charts, and multimedia added to the Commonwealth Fund Web site in the last two weeks, and also offers links to other timely content.
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What's New
How would the bills passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate, as well as President Obama's proposal, affect Medicare beneficiaries? A new Commonwealth Fund issue brief examines provisions of the pending legislation that would strengthen the program by reducing costs for prescription drugs, expanding coverage for preventive care, providing more help for low-income beneficiaries, and supporting accessible, coordinated, and comprehensive care that effectively responds to patients' needs. The legislation also would help to extend the program's fiscal solvency—for nine years, under the Senate bill.
"Some critics have characterized these changes as cuts to the Medicare program, arguing that they represent a reduction in benefits," the authors write. "In fact, all beneficiaries would continue to be guaranteed all of Medicare's basic benefits, and those benefits would be improved with the expansion of coverage for preventive care and reduction in costs for prescription drugs." Read more »
Recent Releases
What will it take to motivate hospitals to do what we know works to make health care safer? In a new commentary, Lucian Leape, M.D., adjunct professor of health policy and management at the Harvard School of Public Health, argues that, of the three major approaches to improving patient safety—regulation/accreditation, financial incentives, and public reporting—the most promising is public reporting of performance information and feedback to providers. Read more »
Denmark leads the world in use of health care technology, with virtually all primary care physicians using electronic medical records with full clinical functionality. A new case study looks at how it's done. All Danish physicians are connected to a national network, which allows them to electronically send and receive clinical data to and from consultant specialists, hospitals, pharmacies, and other health care providers. The "one-letter solution" gets past interoperability roadblocks: this electronic form is used for all types of letters to and from primary care physicians, among over 5,000 health institutions with 50 different technology vendor systems. Read more »
As the implications of the 2008–09 financial crisis for the world economy and markets have become clearer, many foundation executives and investment committees are reassessing their approach to endowment management. In a new essay, Commonwealth Fund Executive Vice President and COO John E. Craig, Jr., M.P.A., reports on the effects of the recent turmoil on foundation endowments thus far, and offers lessons from this crisis and earlier ones that could help boards and investment committees responsible for foundation endowments avoid mistakes going forward. Read more »
The March/April issue of States in Action looks at federal and state strategies to enhance access to basic care, involving efforts to expand and leverage the primary care workforce and to develop and test new models of care delivery. Read more »
In invited testimony before Massachusetts' Commissioner of the Division of Health Care Finance and Policy on March 18, Commonwealth Fund Executive Vice President for Programs Stephen C. Schoenbaum, M.D., M.P.H., discussed ways in which health care organizations can create frameworks for high performance.
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New On The Web
The latest podcast in the New Directions in Health Care series looks at the costs of providing medical services in other parts of the world and considers how health care reform might change the bottom line in this country. The wide-ranging discussion features Karen Davis, president of The Commonwealth Fund; Gerard Anderson, professor of health policy and management and professor of international health at Johns Hopkins University; Julian Le Grand, professor of social policy at the London School of Economics; and Jane Hall, professor of health economics at the University of Technology, Sydney. Read more »
Events
On March 11, Mary Jane Koren, M.D., assistant vice president for the Commonwealth Fund's Frail Elders Program, received the Terrance Keenan Leadership Award in Health Philanthropy from Grantmakers in Health. The award honors outstanding individuals in the field of health philanthropy whose work is distinguished by leadership, innovation, and achievement. Read more »
On April 15, the New York Academy of Medicine's (NYAM) Section on Health Care Delivery will present "Models of Accountable Care Organizations in New York—Issues of Quality and Cost," the third lecture in its series on health care reform and New York State. For more information or to register, visit the NYAM Web site. The next lecture, "Health Care Reform and Access to Coverage," will take place on May 12. Read more »
Join the Health Research and Educational Trust for a webinar on March 29, 2010, from 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. EDT, to discuss best practices of high-performing health systems, based on the findings of Commonwealth Fund–supported research. Three health systems will present their experiences in improving care, including system-wide strategic planning, aligning system goals, standardizing and spreading best practices, and leveraging data and measurement for performance improvement. To register for the free webinar, click here. For more information, contact Julie Yonek at jyonek@aha.org. Read more »