By James Tehrani November 03, 2008 The Commonwealth Fund/Modern Healthcare Opinion Leaders Survey, conducted by Harris Interactive, is an online poll designed to highlight perspectives on the most timely health-policy issues from a panel of the nation’s leading health plan executives, policymakers and healthcare purchasers. It is conducted four times annually. ... FULL STORY
By Barbara Kirchheimer November 03, 2008 As the nation prepares to put a new tenant in the White House, healthcare experts are signaling that they favor an overhaul in the way healthcare providers are paid. ... FULL STORY
By Glenn Hackbarth November 03, 2008 Medicare must change how it pays healthcare providers. Medicare’s payment methods, some of which are followed by private insurers, reward increases in the volume and intensity of service without regard to quality or cost. ... FULL STORY
By J. James Rohack November 03, 2008 Since Medicare was founded in 1965, advances in medical research, education and training have helped increase the average American’s life expectancy by eight years to age 78. Yet while the practice of medicine has evolved, Medicare’s payment system remains stuck in the past. We must improve the payment system in order to provide high-quality care to the baby boomers soon to be entering the program, ensure access to care for the senior and disabled patients who currently rely on the program, and help the nation get the most value for its healthcare dollars. ... FULL STORY
By Barbara Kirchheimer July 21, 2008 More than three-quarters of surveyed healthcare experts favor adding a long-term-care benefit to Medicare, and most agree that ensuring adequate financing and a workforce able to meet the needs of the nation’s aging population top the list of long-term-care policy challenges. ... FULL STORY
By Carol Raphael July 21, 2008 If our nation is to secure the health and quality of life of future generations of older Americans, we have to treat long-term care with the urgency it demands, making it as big a priority on the national healthcare agenda as the uninsured and rising health costs. ... FULL STORY
By Nora Dowd Eisenhower July 21, 2008 Pennsylvania is undergoing a demographic change that most other states will not see for another 10 to 15 years. Experts accurately refer to Pennsylvania as an aging commonwealth. This shift could be viewed as a looming fiscal disaster and human tragedy, but, in our state, it has been seized on as a unique opportunity for change. ... FULL STORY
By Barbara Kirchheimer April 21, 2008 A vast majority of surveyed healthcare leaders say healthcare quality and efficiency will improve only with fundamental change, and among their priorities are strengthening the primary-care system, encouraging greater coordination of care and moving away from fee-for-service payment. ... FULL STORY
By Greg Poulsen April 21, 2008 As the political debate over the nation’s healthcare crisis becomes increasingly polarized, it is tempting to believe that there are only two mutually exclusive paths before us. One proposal argues broadly for greater government involvement in order to ensure “universal” coverage. The other depends on market forces or a “consumer-driven” approach. But neither addresses the core challenge facing our healthcare system: providing quality and value. And that challenge won’t be met solely by enrolling us all in an insurance program or by sending us shopping in the medical marketplace. ... FULL STORY
By Martin Sepulveda April 21, 2008 The “medical home,” a practice-based structure to facilitate the delivery of comprehensive care and to promote strong relationships between patients and their primary-care physician-led teams, has real momentum in healthcare today. Channeling and focusing this initial progress, however, presents a series of challenges if this promising movement is to bear fruit. ... FULL STORY
By Barbara Kirchheimer January 28, 2008 Healthcare leaders appear to align themselves more with leading Democratic presidential contenders than with Republican candidates when it comes to achieving universal coverage, but they say both the Democratic and Republican approaches to healthcare reform fall short on cost control, according to the results of the latest Commonwealth Fund/Modern Healthcare Opinion Leaders Survey. ... FULL STORY
By Darrell Kirch January 28, 2008 In this year’s election-charged political climate, the need to provide healthcare coverage for all Americans is the central focus of the reform debate. While universal coverage is certainly an essential goal, there are multiple other reforms on which we must focus if we are to attain the objective of a better U.S. healthcare system. ... FULL STORY
By Dallas Salisbury January 28, 2008 The consensus of employers, government officials, academics, health consumers, presidents and presidential candidates over the past 70 years has been that the U.S. healthcare “nonsystem” is broken and needs to be fixed. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s tenure saw the first proposals for universal health insurance. ... FULL STORY
