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
In invited testimony before the Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions on June 21, Mary Jane Koren, M.D., M.P.H., vice president for the Picker/Commonwealth Fund Long-Term Quality Improvement Program, made several federal-level recommendations for strengthening the nutritional programs that help frail older adults maintain their independence and well-being.
Koren also discussed why hunger is so common in this population, what the consequences are for patients and for rising health care expenditures, and how home-delivered and congregate meals can help low-income seniors, their families, and health care providers, especially in a time of constrained resources.
"The importance of these programs transcends food," Koren said. "They give people not only something to eat, they give them a reason to eat." Read more »
Recent Releases
The Commonwealth Fund-supported authors of this study in Medical Care Research and Review interviewed quality and financial officers at safety-net hospitals about the impact of a Medicare policy limiting reimbursement for treatment of avoidable and costly hospital-acquired conditions. While a majority of hospital executives said that the policy created a heightened awareness on such conditions and extra incentive to reduce them, very few could offer specific examples of changes in practice that resulted from it. Read more »
Recently passed health reform legislation in Australia encourages public reporting of patient outcomes following hospitalization. In an article in the Medical Journal of Australia, former Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellow Martin Gallagher reviews several of the challenges of reporting health outcomes, including the potential for inappropriate classification of outcomes; the risk of inaccuracy, particularly for small hospitals; and concerns over unduly raising public fears about quality of care. Read more »
In 2006, Massachusetts established a pay-for-performance program to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in hospital care for Medicaid patients. Using data from the first year of the program, former Harkness Fellow Tim Doran, M.D., and colleagues found little evidence of disparities in care. The analysis, published in Health Affairs, raise questions about the utility of addressing disparities in hospital care through pay-for-performance. Read more »
Many states recognize that they can improve care, control costs, and enhance the quality of life for millions of Americans by overhauling the delivery of Medicaid long-term supports and services for those dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid. To help states advance innovative models for long-term and integrated care, the Center for Health Care Strategies (CHCS) has launched two new technical assistance initiatives: "Technical Assistance for Dual Eligible Integrated Care Demonstrations," with SCAN Foundation and Commonwealth Fund support, and the SCAN-supported "Implementing the Roadmaps: Innovations in Long-Term Supports and Services." Both initiatives will create a platform for peer-to-peer learning with state and federal stakeholders and provide resources and supports. Read more »
Research studies from Harkness Fellows in Health Care Policy and Practice include:
- Claire Lemer, a 2004–05 Harkness Fellow, and her coauthors compare hospital medication systems in the United States and the United Kingdom, focusing on each nation’s efforts to prevent adverse drug events and medication errors.
- Franco Sassi, a 2000–01 Harkness Fellow, and his coauthors set out to explore whether increases in mammography screening rates are associated with improvements in the cancer stage at diagnosis, and whether this association varied by women's race/ethnicity.
- Peter Sprivulis, a 2004–05 Harkness Fellow, and his coauthors set out to determine the relationship between peak hospital workload and the rate of adverse events. In another article, he and his coauthors estimated the costs and benefits of creating an interoperable health information exchange system among Australian health care providers and stakeholders.
- Nicholas Steel, a 2002–03 Harkness Fellow, and his coauthors assessed whether adults in England age 50 or older with serious health conditions are receiving recommended care.
- In the Commonwealth Fund–supported study, Technological Change Around the World: Evidence from Heart Attack Care, researchers set out to investigate this issue by comparing heart attack treatments in 17 nations.
- Kieran Walshe, a 2000–01 Harkness Fellow, and his coauthor, find that the public in the United Kingdom has lost confidence in health care professionals as a result of recent inquiries and scandals.
- Sharon Willcox, a 1999–2000 Harkness Fellow, reviews the rationale for three government policies enacted in the late 1990s or 2000 that were intended to promote private coverage, which had been experiencing declining participation.
Read more »
New on the Web
Community Care of North Carolina is a national model for providing cost-effective care for our most vulnerable citizens. With the support of The Commonwealth Fund, a Web site featuring the Community Care of North Carolina Toolkit was developed to provide a step-by-step guide to creating and managing programs similar to Community Care. Visit http://commonwealth.communitycarenc.org/ for the toolkit and additional information. Read more »
The Commonwealth Fund has made available new topic-based RSS feeds and the ability to select topics, such as Affordable Health Insurance and Patient-Centered Care, to create a custom feed. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a format for sharing and distributing Web content. Using an RSS reader or aggregator, you can view data feeds from sites such as The Commonwealth Fund that offer headlines, summaries, and links to the full text.
You can also now embed a Commonwealth Fund news widget on your blog or Web site to display the latest Fund releases on your site.
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