Geographic Variation in Access to Care—The Relationship with Quality

June 13, 2012 - Analyzing data from The Commonwealth Fund's Scorecard on Local Health System Performance, a New England Journal of Medicine Perspective finds widespread differences across local areas in residents' ability to access care, with implications for receipt of preventive care and outcomes.

In Brief

Facilitating Improvement in Primary Care: The Promise of Practice Coaching

June 11, 2012 - This issue brief clarifies the essential features of practice coaching and offers guidance for health system leaders, public and private insurers, and federal and state policymakers on how best to structure and design these programs in primary care settings.

Issue Brief

Achieving Better Quality of Care for Low-Income Populations: The Roles of Health Insurance and the Medical Home in Reducing Health Inequities

May 16, 2012 - A new analysis of the Commonwealth Fund 2010 Biennial Health Insurance Survey demonstrates that when low-income adults have both health insurance and a medical home, they are less likely to report cost-related access problems, more likely to be up-to-date with preventive screenings, and report greater satisfaction with the quality of their care.

Issue Brief

Recommended Core Measures for Evaluating the Patient-Centered Medical Home: Cost, Utilization, and Clinical Quality

May 16, 2012 - This Commonwealth Fund data brief describes how more than 70 researchers came together as part of the Patient-Centered Medical Home Evaluators’ Collaborative to identify a set of standardized measures to assess patient-centered medical homes.

Data Brief

Integrating Immigrants into the U.S. Health System

May 11, 2012 - The authors of this Commonwealth Fund-supported study argue that physicians must develop competencies to provide culturally sensitive care to a more diverse patient population.

In Brief

Gaps in Health Insurance: Why So Many Americans Experience Breaks in Coverage and How the Affordable Care Act Will Help

April 19, 2012 - One-quarter of adults ages 19 to 64 experienced a gap in their health insurance in 2011, with a majority remaining uninsured for one year or more, according to the The Commonwealth Fund Health Insurance Tracking Survey of U.S. Adults.

Issue Brief

Pay-for-Performance Programs to Reduce Racial/Ethnic Disparities: What Might Different Designs Achieve?

April 9, 2012 - With Commonwealth Fund support, researchers used Hospital Quality Alliance data on more than 4 million patients at 4,500 hospitals to analyze the effects of different pay-for-performance designs on disparities in care between minority and white patients.

In Brief

Rising to the Challenge: Results from a Scorecard on Local Health System Performance, 2012

March 14, 2012 - Health care access, cost, quality, and outcomes can vary greatly from one community to the next—both within states and across states—depending on the performance of the health care system available to residents, according to the first-ever local health system scorecard.

Fund Report

Toward a High Performance Health Care System for Vulnerable Populations: Funding for Safety-Net Hospitals

March 8, 2012 - This new report prepared for The Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System offers a series of recommendations to help shore up safety-net hospitals and ensure they can continue to provide high-quality care to low-income, vulnerable patients once the health reform law is fully implemented.

Fund Report

Guiding Transformation: How Medical Practices Can Become Patient-Centered Medical Homes

February 27, 2012 - The patient-centered medical home has been proposed as a model for transforming primary care and improving efficiency and effectiveness in the health care system. This report outlines and describes the changes that most medical practices would need to make to become patient-centered medical homes.

Fund Report

Employers and the Exchanges Under the Small Business Health Options Program: Examining the Potential and the Pitfalls

February 8, 2012 - A set of Commonwealth Fund–supported Health Affairs articles examines the potential of the Affordable Care Act's Small Business Health Care Options Program to provide affordable options for small employers who now face high premiums and administrative costs when they insure their employees.

In the Literature

Regulating Stop–Loss Coverage May Be Needed to Deter Self-Insuring Small Employers from Undermining Market Reforms

February 8, 2012 - This Commonwealth Fund–supported study by Mark A. Hall looks at states’ legal options for regulating employer stop–loss coverage.

In Brief

Large Employers See Scenarios Under Which They Could Move Workers and Retirees to Exchanges

February 8, 2012 - The health insurance exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act are targeted primarily at individuals and small employers. But they are causing many large employers to rethink their health benefits strategies, according to this Commonwealth Fund–supported analysis.

In Brief

Small Firms' Actions in Two Areas, and Exchange Premium and Enrollment Impact

February 8, 2012 - In this Commonwealth Fund–supported study, researchers at the RAND Corporation simulated the effects of the new regulations, given these potential exceptions.

In Brief

How Choices in Exchange Design for States Could Affect Insurance Premiums and Levels of Coverage

February 8, 2012 - With support from The Commonwealth Fund, researchers from the Urban Institute simulated the implications of the various state health insurance exchange design choices.

In Brief