efficiency

A bill making the rounds in the U.S. Senate would open up Medicare data to private organizations that want to use it for research and analysis. The bill, sponsored by Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Judd Gregg (R-NJ), would make claims, enrollment, survey, assessment and other available to private groups hoping to measure care quality, efficiency and effectiveness. Other stakeholders would then have the right to request reports from the research organizations. The research organizations …

In 2003, Congress raised rates to encourage private HMOs to jump into the Medicare program. The idea was that even at higher than they'd budgeted for fee-for-service rates, private HMOs would increase efficiency and lower costs over the long term. Well, a few years later, the evidence suggests otherwise. The move is costing taxpayers $5.2 billion per year, or 12.4 percent more than FFS Medicare, according to a study by the Commonwealth Fund. Right now, the feds pay managed care plans …

Outgoing CMS head Mark McClellan sat down for a chat this week with The Christian Science Monitor. In a wide-ranging discussion, McClellan laid out his belief in the power of competition for improving healthcare efficiency, citing a 10 percent drop in provider costs under the Medicare prescription drug program as an example. He also expressed support for the notion of making Medicare premiums income-sensitive, a concept CMS plans to implement in 2007. Article

CMS announced that it is rolling out the Physician-Hospital Collaboration Demonstration (PHCD), a three-year program designed to gauge whether hospitals can improve outcomes without raising costs, if they reward doctors for providing better care. Under the program, "the hospital would be paid its usual inpatient rate for the patient's care, but would pay to the physician a portion of the savings resulting from quality improvement and efficiency initiatives taken by the physician." …

UnitedHealth subsidiary Ingenix has signed a deal to acquire NWH, a New York-based company specializing in "real-time Internet connections" between healthcare companies, for $52.4 million. NWH reported $18.9 million in revenue and net income of $942,000 last year. A UnitedHealth spokesman said the merger will increase efficiency, and allow the insurer to reimburse physicians more quickly. The move comes on the same week that a report listed the insurer as among the slowest to respond to …

The companies that make RFID systems figured out a long time ago that hospitals are a nearly perfect market for their product. RFID, we're told, will magically transform healthcare, enabling great leaps of productivity and efficiency. And it's quite possible that could happen. Unfortunately, there is also the flip slide: Namely, the fact that RFID raises a number of difficult issues. One of those is privacy. Another is security. Now Wired reports that hackers are learning how to …

Electronic medical records act as a kind of third party in the doctor-patient relationship, a new report in the Annals of Family Medicine concludes. And that can either be a good thing or highly problematic depending on the role that technology plays. If EMR technology is integrated into physician work flow, benefits are tangible. On the other hand, in cases where doctors felt uncomfortable with the technology, a barrier to communication was created, leading to an efficiency trap. …

The Henry Ford Health system will participate in a pilot project designed to test the effectiveness of online consultations. The University of Michigan is participating in a concurrent but separate project. Supporters have argued for years that online consultations can help improve physician efficiency and improve the quality of care. Several players, including RelayHealth, have been trying to develop a business in online consultation technology, but adoption has been slow.

- read this Detroit Free Press article

New research published in Health Affairs challenges the idea that the U.S. is suffering from a physician shortage. Instead, the authors conclude, the problem has to do with efficiency. Authors David Goodman and Wenner argue that physicians can and should be used more effectively, contradicting calls by groups like the American Medical Association and the Association of American Medical Colleges who have called for an increase in the number of medical students. The study looked at …

The Medical Group Management Association is encouraging its member physicians to adopt ePrescribing, noting that the technology can increase patient satisfaction and reduce costs and improve efficiency. Patients like to know that "providers are on top of things," MGMA President William F. Jessee said in a webcast earlier this week. CMS is pushing for greater use of electronic communications between doctors and pharmacies as an integral element of Part D. Article