Health Policy

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OBJECTIVE: To identify hospital/county characteristics and sources of regional heterogeneity associated with readmission penalties. DATA SOURCES/STUDY SETTING: Acute care hospitals under the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program from fiscal years 2013 to 2018 were linked to data from the Annual Hospital Association, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Medicare claims, Hospital Compare, Nursing Home Compare, Area Resource File, Health Inequity Project, and Long-term Care Focus...

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The fee-for-service system that still dominates physician payment in the United States has been criticized for offering incentives to provide more services, rather than emphasizing value over volume. Critics see the system as particularly poorly suited to primary care because it fails to create..

OBJECTIVE: To estimate the relationship between outcomes of care and medical practices' structure and use of organized care improvement processes. DATA SOURCES/STUDY SETTING: We linked Medicare claims data to our national survey of physician practices (2012-2013). Fifty percent response rate; 1,040 responding practices; 31,888 physicians; 868,213 attributed Medicare beneficiaries. STUDY DESIGN: Cross-sectional observational analysis of the relationship between practice characteristics and total spending, readmissions, and ambulatory care-sensitive admissions (ACSAs), for all beneficiaries and five categories of beneficiary defined by predicted need for care...

OBJECTIVE: To test the effectiveness of financial incentives for smoking cessation in the Medicaid population. DATA SOURCES: Secondary data from the Medicaid Incentives for Prevention of Chronic Disease (MIPCD) program and Medicaid claims/encounter data from 2010 to 2015 for five states. STUDY DESIGN: Beneficiaries were randomized into receipt or no receipt of financial incentives. We ran multivariate regression models testing the impact of financial incentives on the use of counseling services, smoking behavior, and Medicaid expenditures and utilization...

BACKGROUND: Estimating individual-level medication costs in an economic evaluation can involve extensive data collection and handling. Implications of detailed versus general approaches are unclear. OBJECTIVES: To compare costing approaches in a trial-based economic evaluation. METHODS: We applied four costing approaches to prescribed medication data from the Tumour necrosis factor inhibitors Against Combination Intensive Therapy randomized controlled trial...

Healthcare expenditure (HCE) spent during an individual's last year of life accounts for a high share of lifetime HCE. This finding is puzzling because an investment in health is unlikely to have a sufficiently long payback period. However, Becker et al. (2007) and Philipson et al. (2010) have advanced a theory designed to explain high willingness to pay (WTP) for an extension of life close to its end. Their testable implications are complemented by the concept of 'pain of risk bearing' introduced by Eeckhoudt and Schlesinger (2006)...

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Substance misuse is a critical and costly public health problem in the United States. Data as of 2016 show 11,517 cases of opioid analgesic misuse, with the majority (6924 cases) related to hydrocodone misuse. Substance misuse impacts our society significantly with high costs related to healthcare, crime, and lost productivity. Opioid analgesic pain relievers are one of the most prescribed classes of medications and are among the most common drugs related to misuse. Increases in emergency department visits of over 200% have been associated with a dramatic surge in written prescriptions for opioid pain relievers...

The United States has the largest socioeconomic disparities in health care access of any wealthy country. We assessed changes in these disparities in the United States under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). We used survey data for the period 2011-15 from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System to assess trends in insurance coverage, having a personal doctor, and avoiding medical care due to cost. All analyses were stratified by household income, education level, employment status, and home ownership status...

Medicare beneficiaries are eligible for health insurance through the public option of traditional Medicare (TM) or may join a private Medicare Advantage (MA) plan. Both are highly subsidized but in different ways. Medicare pays for most of costs directly in TM, and subsidizes MA plans based on a "benchmark" for each beneficiary choosing a private plan. The level of this benchmark is arguably the most important policy decision Medicare makes about the MA program. Many analysts recommend equalizing Medicare's subsidy across the options - referred to in policy circles as a "level playing field...

Surveys of patients' experiences with health care services can reveal how well a country's health system is meeting the needs of its population. Using data from a 2016 survey conducted in eleven countries-Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States-we found that US adults reported poor health and well-being and were the most likely to experience material hardship. The United States trailed other countries in making health care affordable and ranked poorly on providing timely access to medical care (except specialist care)...

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IMPORTANCE: The Affordable Care Act is the most important health care legislation enacted in the United States since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. The law implemented comprehensive reforms designed to improve the accessibility, affordability, and quality of health care. OBJECTIVES: To review the factors influencing the decision to pursue health reform, summarize evidence on the effects of the law to date, recommend actions that could improve the health care system, and identify general lessons for public policy from the Affordable Care Act...

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether a communication and resolution approach to patient harm is associated with changes in medical liability processes and outcomes. DATA SOURCES/STUDY SETTING: Administrative, safety, and risk management data from the University of Illinois Hospital and Health Sciences System, from 2002 to 2014. STUDY DESIGN: Single health system, interrupted time series design. Using Mann-Whitney U tests and segmented regression models, we compared means and trends in incident reports, claims, event analyses, patient communication consults, legal fees, costs per claim, settlements, and self-insurance expenses before and after the implementation of the "Seven Pillars" communication and resolution intervention...

OBJECTIVE: To update a past systematic review on whether Medicare Part D changed drug utilization and out-of-pocket (OOP) costs overall and within subpopulations, and to identify evidence gaps. DATA SOURCES/STUDY SETTING: Published and gray literature from 2010 to 2015 meeting prespecified screening criteria, including having a comparison group, and utilization or OOP cost outcomes. STUDY DESIGN: We conducted a systematic literature review with a quality assessment...

Estimates of annual health spending for a comprehensive set of medical conditions are presented for the entire US population and with totals benchmarked to the National Health Expenditure Accounts. In 2013 mental disorders topped the list of most costly conditions, with spending at $201 billion.

This paper performs several tests of decision analysis applied to the health domain. First, we conduct a test of the normative expected utility theory. Second, we investigate the possibility to elicit the more general prospect theory. We observe risk aversion for gains and losses and violations of expected utility. These results imply that mechanisms governing decisions in the health domain are similar to those in the monetary domain. However, we also report one important deviation: utility is universally concave for the health outcomes used in this study, in contrast to the commonly found S-shaped utility for monetary outcomes, with concave utility for gains and convex utility for losses...

IMPORTANCE: Hypertension is a leading cause of premature death in China, but limited evidence is available on the prevalence and management of hypertension and its effect on mortality from cardiovascular disease (CVD). OBJECTIVES: To examine the prevalence, diagnosis, treatment, and control of hypertension and to assess the CVD mortality attributable to hypertension in China. DESIGN, SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: This prospective cohort study (China Kadoorie Biobank Study) recruited 500 223 adults, aged 35 to 74 years, from the general population in China...