More companies are sending their retirees into private insurance exchanges for their retiree health coverage. That may result in retirees paying more out of pocket.
Both IBM and Time Warner recently announced plans to move retirees who are of Medicare-eligibility age to private exchanges. They will receive a fixed amount of money from companies and choose among health plans—including Medicare supplemental and Medicare Advantage plans, offered through the private marketplaces.
Read more »
A new study of electronic cigarettes offers the first clinical evidence of their effectiveness in helping tobacco smokers quit, though it does not address their safety.
The report, published Monday in the medical journal The Lancet, assessed the efficacy of e-cigarettes compared with nicotine patches in helping smokers quit. Patches are one of seven FDA-approved nicotine replacement therapy products. The FDA has not yet issued any assessment of e-cigarettes.
Read more »
A study found no evidence that primary-care physicians spend less time with safety net patients and the uninsured than with privately insured patients, countering longstanding assumptions that doctors give less attention to Medicaid and uninsured patients.
The study in the September issue of the journal Health Affairs looked at the amount of time physicians spent with patients and found no significant differences between those with private insurance and patients with Medicaid or those uninsured.
Read more »
Though the gender earnings gap has been narrowing across most professions, sharp salary inequities persist among physicians, according to a research letter published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Researchers analyzed data—occupation, hours worked, annual earnings, age, sex and race—from the March Current Population Survey to identify trends in male and female pay among physicians, other healthcare professionals and workers overall.
Read more »
Larger independent physician groups with “strong primary-care orientations” and where doctors have accepted greater financial risk deliver better quality care for Medicare beneficiaries at lower cost, according to a report in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Researchers with Harvard Medical School's healthcare policy department studied 2009 Medicare claims for almost 4.3 million beneficiaries and compared spending and quality measures for small (one to 10 doctors), medium-to-large and hospital-based physician groups. Quality measures included 30-day hospital readmissions, and mammography, diabetes and cholesterol screening for the appropriate patients.
Read more »
Patients do care about what becomes of their health information after it's used for their treatment, and they care more about what it's used for than who's using it.
That's according to a survey report published online in the Journal of the American Medical Association summarizing research aimed to measure patient preferences about sharing their electronic health information for so-called “secondary uses.”
Read more »
Kaiser Permanente reports it used patient registries, data analytics, dissemination of evidence-based guidelines, sharing of performance metrics and the increased use of prescription drugs to achieve a near doubling of the rate of patients who got their high blood pressure under control. The report highlights the growing focus by healthcare providers and health plans on taking proactive measures to improve population health and management of chronic medical conditions.
Results of the long-term, large-scale and multifaceted effort were published online in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The lead author is Dr. Marc Jaffe, of the Kaiser Permanente South San Francisco Medical Center.
Read more »
Physician assistants and nurse practitioners increasingly are specializing and can't be counted on to provide the solution to the nation's shortage of primary-care providers, a report by the American Academy of Family Physicians concluded.
Even though they're often touted as a solution to filling in patient care gaps because of a shortage of primary-care docs, not enough PAs and NPs are working in primary care to make a difference, so policymakers need to come up with better solutions to address primary-care access, the researchers said.
Read more »
The application of health information technology in primary-care settings can improve the quality of care, but it's no magic wand for quality improvement, according to a report on two dozen grant programs funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
The report found the use of health IT coincided with greater adherence by providers to processes related to evidence-based care recommendations and improvements in patients' overall health status, as well as improved clinical outcomes for patients with chronic diseases if coupled with other workflow changes, among other findings.
Read more »
Here's discouraging news: New research has found poor results from blood sugar and blood pressure tests did not appear to prompt healthy changes to diet and exercise among older adults.
On the bright side, the study turned up a few exceptions. The research analyzed results from the 2006, 2008 and 2010 National Institute on Aging's Health and Retirement Study and found some participants lost weight, quit smoking or curbed their drinking after laboratory tests revealed dangerously high blood sugar or blood pressure levels. But not many.
Read more »
The high cost of excessive drinking can be tallied in billions of dollars for health costs, lost productivity, criminal justice expenses and property damage, a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study found.
Nationwide the cost of binge drinking was $223.5 billion in 2006, according to the study, with a median cost of $2.9 billion to each state and the District of Columbia.
Read more »
