I’ve seen a few commentaries that suggest healthcare inflation is slowing. There are different opinions about the root causes – merely a consequence of the general economic slowdown vs. a true change in utilization patterns. Two recent reports suggest that costs healthcare inflation is not really slowing and is still greater...
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Last week I wrote about the comparison between the average hospital costs of U.S. hospitals compared to other developed countries. The bottom line is that U.S. hospital average length of stay and total hospital days per adult per year compare very favorably to the rest of the world. But the cost...
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Hospitals are the single largest category of healthcare expenses nationally, accounting for about 1/3 of all healthcare costs.A recent summary of data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development by the Commonwealth Fund shed light on realities I believe many change advocates are unaware of. Imagine you were on a...
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The state of Oregon and the Obama administration just announced the approval of a federal waiver to allow innovation in the state’s Medicaid program. The feds agreed to chip in $1.9 billion over five years to get the program off the ground. The AP reporter covering this story wrote, “Gov. John...
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