One of the two Democrats who helped write the Medicare prescription drug law has criticized its implementation and urged federal officials to quickly fix what he sees as an array of problems with the benefit that began Jan. 1. Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said he was "disappointed and extremely concerned" with the transition of dual-eligibles—Medicare beneficiaries who also qualify for Medicaid—from Medicaid to Medicare drug coverage, by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Read more »
While health care has improved for many Americans, gaps have widened in both the quality of care and access to care for Hispanics, according to two reports released by the Department of Health and Human Service's Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Significant disparities between minorities and whites continue to exist with some signs of improvement, according to the 2005 National Healthcare Disparities Report. Overall, racial disparities in most of both the quality measurements and the access measurements were narrowing. But for Hispanics, the disparities in a majority of both the quality measurements and the access measurements were growing, researchers found. Read more »
Reducing copayments for patients on cholesterol-lowering medication can keep them healthier and cut U.S. medical costs by more than $1 billion annually, according to a RAND Corporation study. The report found that when cholesterol-lowering drugs cost less, patients were more likely to take their medication, leading to fewer health problems and hospitalizations. Researchers based their findings on estimates of about 6.3 million American adults with private insurance or Medicare coverage who take cholesterol-lowering medication. Read more »
A key advisory panel voted to adopt a final recommendation that Congress increase Medicare hospital inpatient payments in fiscal 2007 by 0.45 percent less than the "market basket" increase in the projected costs of such care. Because the increase for fiscal 2007 is projected to be 4 percent, the recommendation by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) would amount to a 3.55 percent increase in inpatient payments next year under the Medicare prospective payment system. The percentage point figure of 0.45 represents half of an adjustment the commission makes to account for productivity growth when it considers how much of a payment increase to recommend for hospital inpatient and outpatient payments. Read more »
Increasing hours of nursing care could save lives, shorten hospital visits, and prevent medical complications, according to a new study that appears in the January/February issue of Health Affairs. The article examines the health outcomes and costs that could result from raising the proportion of registered nurses (RNs) and hours of nursing care per patient. The study concluded that increasing the proportion of RNs improves care without raising costs and that increasing the number of nurses improves care at a price. Read more »
Health care spending growth slowed in 2004 to 7.9 percent, the lowest level of increase in four years, mostly due to a slowdown in the growth of drug spending, federal officials said. For the first time in a decade, drug spending growth slowed to single digits, rising 8.2 percent, or less than half the rate measured just five years earlier, according to the report published in the journal Health Affairs. In 2004, health care spending was $1.9 trillion, or $6,280 per person. The study also shows that U.S. spending on health care now accounts for 16 percent of the gross domestic product, up from 13.8 percent in 1993 and 9.1 percent in 1980. Read more »
Patients provide consistent and reliable information about the quality of medical care physicians give and how their offices operate, a new study has found. In the statewide demonstration study of physicians in Massachusetts' five leading commercial health plans and Medicaid, researchers at Tufts–New England Medical Center and Massachusetts Health Quality Partners found reports by 45 patients of individual physicians are "highly consistent and reliable sources of data." Meanwhile, individual physicians vary substantially from one another on measures such as communication quality, accessibility, and coordination of care. Read more »