I’m back. My WordPress site got hacked (first time). Sorry if this disrupted anyone’s email or other computer functions. The malware is gone now. A new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research reports on the results of a large randomized controlled trial of a large employer with over 12,000 employees....
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I have written about both issues before: freestanding ERs and retail clinics. Two recent studies continue to show how useless they both are in helping create a better more efficient healthcare system. The freestanding ER study  examined the number of these facilities and population characteristics where they locate. They identified 360 freestanding...
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In our recent paper criticizing how industrial Quality Improvement has been misapplied to primary care, we didn’t just complain, we made suggestions for a better way forward. This was under the assumption that regulators and payers will continue to insist on some kind of numeric reporting of outcomes by physicians or...
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In our recent paper criticizing how industrial Quality Improvement has been misapplied to primary care, we didn’t just complain, we made suggestions for a better way forward. This was under the assumption that regulators and payers will continue to insist on some kind of numeric reporting of outcomes by physicians or...
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Our national useless dialogue on the future of healthcare in the U.S. continues. Trumpocare has a long way to go before it potentially becomes law, so no one knows  what it will finally look like. Obamacare is in a death spiral anyway. I’ve written about it before, and still believe this...
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The AAFP’s recent statement on Advanced Primary Care calls for adopting the “five key functions of the Comprehensive Primary Care Plus Initiative.” This was an experiment under Obamacare where CMS tried to create innovative primary care payment approaches, which was mostly patterned after NCQA PCMH thinking. It started in 2012. Mathematica Policy...
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A recent survey of physicians asked several questions about prescribing practices. The primary report was that only primary care physicians cited costs as one of the most important considerations in their prescribing habits. Out of 10 factors, all of the ologists ranked cost as the sixth or less most important consideration. Pulmonologists...
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I have written before about predictions of the actual costs of Obamacare and the probable death spiral of increasing costs and decreasing participants. Several recent reports have brought more clarity to the cost realities. Recently regulators across the country approved rate hike requests by Obamacare insurance companies even greater than they...
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A key part of Obamacare is not going so well. But before I continue, I assume that some of my readers won’t know some of the acronyms, so I’ll define them. An ACO is an Accountable Care Organization, which was created in the PPACA (Obamacare). The spirit of an ACO was...
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How much does it cost to deliver a baby in the U.S.? Just don’t do it in Sacramento. Castlight Health released a report based on claims data looking at the actual cost of delivering  a baby across the country. In other words, it’s how much money actually changed hands, not the inflated...
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