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
Experts surveyed in the latest Commonwealth Fund/Modern Healthcare Health Care Opinion Leaders Survey support moving away from the current method of negotiating health care payments—a complex system in which public and private health insurers each engage independently with multiple health care providers to negotiate or set payment rates with hospitals and physicians. The majority of opinion leaders (56%) support replacing this system with all-payer rate setting, in which a government authority would set the rates, or an all-payer system of jointly negotiating rates for all payers. Such a strategy could help reduce excess administrative expenses and wide variation in prices, note Commonwealth Fund researchers Kristof Stremikis, Karen Davis, and Stuart Guterman in a new data brief on the survey findings.
Opinion leaders also voiced broad support for creating a standard method of rewarding quality and efficiency across private insurers and public payers.
"The way we currently pay for health care leads to unnecessary confusion and wide variation, and sometimes borders on chaotic," said Karen Davis. "Experts agree that if private payers and public programs could come together and agree to pay the same way, and the same amount, we can improve the efficiency of our health care system, eliminate administrative waste, and create better experiences for patients."
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Recent Releases
Two new issue briefs exploring ways to pay for medical home services were recently published by the Safety Net Medical Home Initiative, a Commonwealth Fund–supported demonstration project to help 65 community health centers in five states transform themselves into patient-centered medical homes. Paying for the Medical Home: Payment Models to Support Patient-Centered Medical Home Transformation in the Safety Net describes 10 models for medical home payment, as well as recommendations on how community health centers can prepare for payment methods that are not strictly fee-for-service. Health Reform and the Patient-Centered Medical Home: Policy Provisions and Expectations of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act provides an overview of the Affordable Care Act and looks at how that law supports safety net clinics to become patient-centered medical homes. Read more »
Elderly, chronically ill people experience frequent changes in health status that require transitions among health care providers and settings. This new issue brief describes two projects that identified the essential elements of effective care management interventions for this population and explored how to integrate one such intervention, the Transitional Care Model, into mainstream practice. Read more »
By eliminating or reducing copayments for key drugs prescribed for employees at risk for cardiovascular disease, a value-based health insurance program at the U.S. technology firm Pitney Bowes led to modest increases in medication adherence rates compared with a control group, according to a new Commonwealth Fund–supported study. Read more »
This Commonwealth Fund–supported study of nursing homes in New York State identified steps that could potentially reduce the need to hospitalize residents. Among them are: training nursing staff to communicate effectively with physicians, providing more rapid access to laboratory results on weekends, and treating hospitalization as a last resort. Read more »
In the inaugural issue of the Commonwealth Fund newsletter, International Health News Briefing, we report on health policy news from the U.K., Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, and New Zealand, as well as provide updates from the Fund's International Health Policy and Innovation Program. Read more »
New on the Web
Two new blog posts comment on the findings of the recent Commonwealth Fund/Modern Healthcare Health Care Opinion Leaders Survey on transparency and pricing in health care. Barbra G. Rabson, M.P.H., executive director of Massachusetts Health Quality Partners, argues that, "If we want high-quality, high-value health care in this country, we need to share information about what is happening inside our health care system with everyone who gets, gives or pays for care." In her post, Louise Probst, executive director of the St. Louis Area Business Health Coalition, asks: "Considering the impact of health care spending, and the waste associated with it, how is it that consumers of the largest sector of our economy know so little about price?" Read more »
There is much more to the Affordable Care Act than has made it into news headlines or political debates. A new blog post explains how to use the Fund's Health Reform Resource Center, which enables users to explore the many facets of the Affordable Care Act. There are two ways to use it: by viewing a timeline that shows the highlights of the reform law by year, with links to related Fund resources; or by using a powerful tool that enables you to search the provisions of the law by year, category, and/or stakeholder group. Read more »
You can access the archived recording and presentations from a Nov. 4 webinar on the state health insurance exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act. The webinar—the second in a series held by The Commonwealth Fund on realizing health reform's potential—had some 900 people in attendance. Speakers discussed the major challenges to successful implementation of the exchanges, presented policy options and recommendations for federal and state officials, and provided an update on the status of the regulatory process and state implementation. Read more »
Watch the video and view the presentations from an Oct. 29 briefing on what the U.S. and other nations have learned from their experiences to date with health information technology (IT), and how adoption is likely to progress in the U.S. under the terms of the stimulus package and the new health reform law, both of which invest substantial resources in health IT. The webinar was moderated by Robin Osborn, vice president and director of the Commonwealth Fund's International Program in Health Policy and Innovation, and Humphrey Taylor of Harris Interactive. Speakers included David Blumenthal, national coordinator of health information technology, Tom Bowden of HealthLink in New Zealand, Ib Johansen of MedCom in Denmark, and Sabine Koch of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Read more »
The Commonwealth Fund/Harvard University Fellowships in Minority Health Policy are now open to applicants for the 2011–12 fellowship year. This unique fellowship is designed to prepare physicians for leadership roles in formulating and promoting health policies and practices that improve access to high-quality care for minority and other disadvantaged populations. For more information, please visit http://www.mfdp.med.harvard.edu/fellows_faculty/cfhuf/about.html. Read more »