This study determined potential racial and ethnic disparities in risk for all-cause 30-day readmission among traditional Medicare (TM) and Medicare Advantage (MA) beneficiaries initially hospitalized for acute myocardial infarction, congestive heart failure, or pneumonia. Our analyses of New York State hospital administrative data between 2009 and 2012 found that overall 30-day readmission rate declined from 22.0% in 2009 to 20.7% in 2012 for TM beneficiaries, and from 20.2% in 2009 to 17.9% in 2012 for MA beneficiaries. However, persistent racial disparities were found in propensity-score–based analyses among TM beneficiaries (e.g., in 2012, adjusted odds ratio [OR] = 1.11, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.01-1.23, p = .029), though not among MA beneficiaries (in 2012, adjusted OR = 1.05, 95% CI = 0.92-1.19, p = .476). We did not find evidence of persistent ethnic disparity for TM (in 2012, adjusted OR = 1.08, 95% CI = 0.93-1.25, p = .303) or MA (in 2012, adjusted OR = 0.99, 95% CI = 0.88-1.11, p = .837) beneficiaries. We conclude that enrollment in MA seemed to be associated with significantly reduced readmission rate and potentially reduced racial disparity.
Available evidence has suggested that strong primary care (PC) systems are associated with better outcomes. This study aims to investigate whether PC strength is specifically related to the prevalence of patients’ financially driven postponement of general practitioner (GP) care. Therefore, data from a cross-sectional multicountry study in 33 countries among GPs and their patients were analyzed using multilevel logistic regression modelling. According to the results, the variation between countries in the levels of patients’ postponement of seeking GP care for financial reasons was large. More than one third of these cross-country differences could be explained by characteristics of the health care system and the GP practices. In particular, PC systems with good accessibility and those systems that offer comprehensive care were associated with lower levels of financially driven delay. Consequently, we can conclude that well-organized PC systems can compensate for the negative influence of individual characteristics (socioeconomic position) on the care-seeking behaviors of patients.
We explore the extent to which state scope of practice laws are related to nurse practitioners (NPs)’ day-to-day practice autonomy. We found that NPs experienced greater day-to-day practice autonomy when they had prescriptive independence. Surprisingly, there were only small and largely insignificant differences in day-to-day practice autonomy between NPs in fully restricted states and those in states with independent practice but restricted prescription authority. The scope of practice effects were strong for primary care NPs. We also found that the amount of variation in day-to-day practice autonomy within the scope of practice categories existed, which suggests that factors other than state scope of practice laws may influence NP practice as well. Removing barriers at all levels that potentially prevent NPs from practicing to the full extent of their education and training is critical not only to increase primary care capacity but also to make NPs more efficient and effective providers.
Care management (CM) is a promising team-based, patient-centered approach "designed to assist patients and their support systems in managing medical conditions more effectively." As little is known about its implementation, this article describes CM implementation and associated lessons from 12 Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality–sponsored projects. Two rounds of data collection resulted in project-specific narratives that were analyzed using an iterative approach analogous to framework analysis. Informants also participated as coauthors. Variation emerged across practices and over time regarding CM services provided, personnel delivering these services, target populations, and setting(s). Successful implementation was characterized by resource availability (both monetary and nonmonetary), identifying as well as training employees with the right technical expertise and interpersonal skills, and embedding CM within practices. Our findings facilitate future context-specific implementation of CM within medical homes. They also inform the development of medical home recognition programs that anticipate and allow for contextual variation.
Patient evaluations of physician communication are widely used, but we know little about how these relate to professionally agreed norms of communication quality. We report an investigation into the association between patient assessments of communication quality and an observer-rated measure of communication competence. Consent was obtained to video record consultations with Family Practitioners in England, following which patients rated the physician’s communication skills. A sample of consultation videos was subsequently evaluated by trained clinical raters using an instrument derived from the Calgary-Cambridge guide to the medical interview. Consultations scored highly for communication by clinical raters were also scored highly by patients. However, when clinical raters judged communication to be of lower quality, patient scores ranged from "poor" to "very good." Some patients may be inhibited from rating poor communication negatively. Patient evaluations can be useful for measuring relative performance of physicians’ communication skills, but absolute scores should be interpreted with caution.
Multiple studies claim that public place smoking bans are associated with reductions in smoking-related hospitalization rates. No national study using complete hospitalization counts by area that accounts for contemporaneous controls including state cigarette taxes has been conducted. We examine the association between county-level smoking-related hospitalization rates and comprehensive smoking bans in 28 states from 2001 to 2008. Differences-in-differences analysis measures changes in hospitalization rates before versus after introducing bans in bars, restaurants, and workplaces, controlling for cigarette taxes, adjusting for local health and provider characteristics. Smoking bans were not associated with acute myocardial infarction or heart failure hospitalizations, but lowered pneumonia hospitalization rates for persons ages 60 to 74 years. Higher cigarette taxes were associated with lower heart failure hospitalizations for all ages and fewer pneumonia hospitalizations for adults aged 60 to 74. Previous studies may have overestimated the relation between smoking bans and hospitalizations and underestimated the effects of cigarette taxes.
Massachusetts Health Reform (MHR), implemented in 2006, introduced new health insurance options that may have prompted some veterans already enrolled in the Veterans Affairs Healthcare System (VA) to reduce their reliance on VA health services. This study examined whether MHR was associated with changes in VA primary care (PC) use. Using VA administrative data, we identified 147,836 veterans residing in Massachusetts and neighboring New England (NE) states from October 2004 to September 2008. We applied difference-in-difference methods to compare pre–post changes in PC use among Massachusetts and other NE veterans. Among veterans not enrolled in Medicare, VA PC use was not significantly different following MHR for Massachusetts veterans relative to other NE veterans. Among VA–Medicare dual enrollees, MHR was associated with an increase of 24.5 PC visits per 1,000 veterans per quarter (p = .048). Despite new non-VA health options through MHR, VA enrollees continued to rely on VA PC.
The Affordable Care Act is expected to profoundly affect inpatient hospital utilization, both as a result of expansions in insurance coverage as well as payment and delivery system reforms. The objective of this study is to examine changes in inpatient utilization between 2010 and 2013 in California, following a Medicaid expansion and implementation of the Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment program. Findings show that between 2010 and 2013: (a) the overall number of inpatient admissions increased, mainly because an increase in Medicaid admissions exceeded the decrease in uninsured admissions; (b) the number of preventable admissions did not change; (c) preventable admissions decreased at safety net hospitals that received Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment funds relative to other safety net hospitals. The results suggest that delivery system reforms may help offset the upward pressures on utilization and costs due to coverage expansions.
Policy makers and stakeholders have reached a consensus that both quality and spending or resource use indicators should be jointly measured and prioritized to meet the objectives of our health system. However, the relative merits of alternative approaches that combine quality and spending indicators are not well understood. We conducted a literature review to identify different approaches that combine indicators of quality and spending measures to profile provider efficiency in the context of specific applications in health care. Our investigation identified seven alternative models that are either in use or have been proposed to evaluate provider efficiency. We then used publicly available data to profile hospitals using these approaches. Profiles of hospital efficiency using alternative models yielded wide variation in performance, underscoring the importance of model selection. By identifying the current efficiency models and evaluating their trade-offs within specific programmatic contexts, our analysis informs stakeholder and policy maker decisions about how to link quality and spending indicators when measuring efficiency in health care.
Hospital executives are under continual pressure to control spending and improve quality. While prior studies have focused on the relationship between overall hospital spending and quality, the relationship between spending on specific services and quality has received minimal attention. The literature thus provides executives limited guidance regarding how they should allocate scarce resources. Using Medicare claims and cost report data, we examined the association between hospital spending for specific services and 30-day readmission rates for heart failure, pneumonia, and acute myocardial infarction. We found that occupational therapy is the only spending category where additional spending has a statistically significant association with lower readmission rates for all three medical conditions. One possible explanation is that occupational therapy places a unique and immediate focus on patients’ functional and social needs, which can be important drivers of readmission if left unaddressed.
We examine the impact of electronic health record (EHR) adoption on charge capture—the ability of providers to properly ensure that billable services are accurately recorded and reported for payment. Drawing on billing and practice management data from a large, integrated pediatric primary care network that was previously a paper-based organization, monthly encounter, charge, and collection data were collected from 2008 through 2013. Two-level fixed effects models were built to test the impact of EHR adoption on charge capture. The introduction of the EHR to the pediatric primary care network was independently associated with an $11.09 increase in average per patient charges, an $11.49 increase in average per patient collections, and an improvement in physicians’ charge-to-collection ratios. Despite high initial outlays and operating costs related to EHR adoption, these results suggest organizations may recoup many of these costs over the long term.
Our review establishes the empirical evidence for patient mobility for elective secondary care services in countries that allow patients to choose their health care provider. PubMed and Embase were searched for relevant articles between 1990 and 2015. Of 5,994 titles/abstracts reviewed, 26 studies were included. The studies used three main methodological models to establish mobility. Variation in the extent of patient mobility was observed across the studies. Mobility was positively associated with lower waiting times, indicators of better service quality, and access to advanced technology. It was negatively associated with advanced age or lower socioeconomic backgrounds. From a policy perspective we demonstrate that a significant proportion of patients are prepared to travel beyond their nearest provider for elective services. As a consequence, some providers are likely to be "winners" and others "losers," which could result in overall decreased provider capacity or inefficient utilization of existing services. Equity also remains a key concern.
Increasing patient demand following health care reform has led to concerns about provider shortages, particularly in primary care and for Medicaid patients. Nurse practitioners (NPs) represent a potential solution to meeting demand. However, varying state scope of practice regulations and Medicaid reimbursement rates may limit efficient distribution of NPs. Using a national sample of 252,657 ambulatory practices, we examined the effect of state policies on NP employment in primary care and practice Medicaid acceptance. NPs had 13% higher odds of working in primary care in states with full scope of practice; those odds increased to 20% if the state also reimbursed NPs at 100% of the physician Medicaid fee-for-service rate. Furthermore, in states with 100% Medicaid reimbursement, practices with NPs had 23% higher odds of accepting Medicaid than practices without NPs. Removing scope of practice restrictions and increasing Medicaid reimbursement may increase NP participation in primary care and practice Medicaid acceptance.
This study assesses individual- and area-level predictors of racial/ethnic disparities in mental health care episodes for adults with psychiatric illness. Multilevel regression models are estimated using data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Surveys linked to area-level data sets. Compared with Whites, Blacks and Latinos live in neighborhoods with higher minority density, lower average education, and greater specialist mental health provider density, all of which predict lesser mental health care initiation. Neighborhood-level variables do not have differential effects on mental health care by race/ethnicity. Racial/ethnic disparities arise because minorities are more likely to live in neighborhoods where treatment initiation is low, rather than because of a differential influence of neighborhood disadvantage on treatment initiation for minorities compared with Whites. Low rates of initiation in neighborhoods with a high density of specialists suggest that interventions to increase mental health care specialists, without a focus on treating racial/ethnic minorities, may not reduce access disparities.
This study examines the association between the quality of hospital discharge planning and all-cause 30-day readmissions and same-hospital readmissions. The sample included adults aged 18 years and older hospitalized in 16 states in 2010 or 2011 for acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, pneumonia, or total hip or joint arthroplasty. Data from the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems measured discharge-planning quality at the hospital level. A generalized linear mixed model was used to estimate the contribution of patient and hospital characteristics to 30-day all-cause and same-hospital readmissions. Discharge-planning quality was associated with (a) lower rates of 30-day hospital readmissions and (b) higher rates of same-hospital readmissions for heart failure, pneumonia, and total hip or joint replacement. These results suggest that by improving inpatient discharge planning, hospitals may be able to influence their 30-day readmissions and increase the likelihood that readmissions will be to the same hospital.
We examined associations between enrollment in Medicare Part D pharmacy benefits and changes in medication acquisition from Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) pharmacies. We included all women and a random 10% sample of men who were VA enrollees, ≥65 years old as of January 1, 2004, and alive through December 2007. We used difference-in-differences models with propensity score weighting to examine changes in medication acquisition between 2005 (before Part D was implemented) and 2007 (after Part D implementation) for veterans who were or were not Part D enrolled. Of 231,716 veterans meeting inclusion criteria, 49,881 (21.5%) were enrolled. While 30-day medication supplies decreased from 26.2 to 23.4 for enrolled veterans, they increased from 36.6 to 37.4 for nonenrolled veterans (difference-in-differences: –4.0, p < .001). Reductions in 30-day supplies were greater among veterans who were required to pay VA copayments for some or all medications and who used VA and Medicare outpatient services.
This commentary highights the key arguments and contributions of institutional thoery, transaction cost economics (TCE) theory, high reliability theory, and organizational learning theory to understanding the development and evolution of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). Institutional theory and TCE theory primarily emphasize the external influences shaping ACOs while high reliability theory and organizational learning theory underscore the internal fctors influencing ACO perfromance. A framework based on Implementation Science is proposed to conside the multiple perspectives on ACOs and, in particular, their abiity to innovate to achieve desired cost, quality, and population health goals.
To accomplish the goal of improving quality of care while simultaneously reducing cost, Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) need to find new and better ways of providing health care to populations of patients. This requires implementing best practices and improving collaboration across the multiple entities involved in care delivery, including patients. In this article, we discuss seven lessons from the organizational learning literature that can help ACOs overcome the inherent challenges of learning how to work together in radically new ways. The lessons involve setting expectations, creating a supportive culture, and structuring the improvement efforts. For example, with regard to setting expectations, framing the changes as learning experiences rather than as implementation projects encourages the teams to utilize helpful activities, such as dry runs and pilot tests. It is also important to create an organizational culture where employees feel safe pointing out improvement opportunities and experimenting with new ways of working. With regard to structure, stable, cross-functional teams provide a powerful building block for effective improvement efforts. The article concludes by outlining opportunities for future research on organizational learning in ACOs.
Frequent emergency department (ED) use is a public health and policy relevant concern but has not previously been examined in the Medicare population. We conducted a retrospective, claims-based analysis of a nationally representative 20% sample of fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries in 2010 (n = 5,778,038) to examine frequent ED use. We used multinomial logistic regression to study the relationship between frequent ED use and sociodemographic, outpatient care, and clinical characteristics. Factors that were most strongly associated with frequent ED use included being age 18 to 34 years compared with 65 to 74 years (relative risk ratio = 20.5, confidence interval [CI; 19.7, 21.3]) and mental illness (relative risk ratio = 6.8, CI [6.7, 6.9]). Low versus high continuity of care was associated with 24% (95% CI [1.21, 1.26]) greater risk of frequent compared with non-ED use. Although clinical and demographic characteristics are most strongly associated with frequent ED use, poor continuity of care is also a contributor.
While implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act brings significant opportunities for safety net providers (SNP), local systems vary in how well they adapt to the rapidly evolving environment. Collaboration may enhance SNP capacity to leverage opportunities in the health reform era. Our study examines key opportunities and challenges SNPs face under health reform and how providers use collaboration as a strategy to adapt to the new environment. A qualitative study of 78 executives at safety net organizations identified six priorities that pose both opportunities and challenges for SNP, and around which collaboration is used as a strategy to achieve common goals: Medicaid expansion, outreach and enrollment, capacity and access, health system transformation, health insurance exchanges, and reductions in government funding. Three types of collaborations emerged: policy and advocacy, community action, and practice-based. Types of collaborations and stakeholders involved appeared to vary by priority.
Accountable Care Organizations’ (ACOs) pursuit of the triple aim of higher quality, lower cost, and improved population health has met with mixed results. To improve the design and implementation of ACOs we look to organizations that manage similarly complex, dynamic, and tightly coupled conditions while sustaining exceptional performance known as high-reliability organizations. We describe the key processes through which organizations achieve reliability, the leadership and organizational practices that enable it, and the role that professionals can play when charged with enacting it. Specifically, we present concrete practices and processes from health care organizations pursuing high-reliability and from early ACOs to illustrate how the triple aim may be met by cultivating mindful organizing, practicing reliability-enhancing leadership, and identifying and supporting reliability professionals. We conclude by proposing a set of research questions to advance the study of ACOs and high-reliability research.
Using a Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) approach, this paper explores which organizational forms Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) may take. A critical question about form is the amount of vertical integration that an ACO may have, a topic central to TCE. We posit that contextual factors outside and inside an ACO will produce variable transaction costs (the non-production costs of care) such that the decision to integrate vertically will derive from a comparison of these external versus internal costs, assuming reasonably rational management abilities. External costs include those arising from environmental uncertainty and complexity, small numbers bargaining, asset specificity, frequency of exchanges, and information "impactedness." Internal costs include those arising from human resource activities including hiring and staffing, training, evaluating (i.e., disciplining, appraising, or promoting), and otherwise administering programs. At the extreme, these different costs may produce either total vertical integration or little to no vertical integration with most ACOs falling in between. This essay demonstrates how TCE can be applied to the ACO organization form issue, explains TCE, considers ACO activity from the TCE perspective, and reflects on research directions that may inform TCE and facilitate ACO development.
Specialty providers claim to offer a new competitive benchmark for efficient delivery of health care. This article explores this view by examining evidence for price competition between ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) and hospital outpatient departments (HOPDs). I studied the impact of ASC market presence on actual prices paid to HOPDs during 2007-2010 for four common surgical procedures that were performed in both provider types. For the procedures examined, HOPDs received payments from commercial insurers in the range of 3.25% to 5.15% lower for each additional ASC per 100,000 persons in a market. HOPDs may have less negotiating leverage with commercial insurers on price in markets with high ASC market penetration, resulting in relatively lower prices.
This study investigates whether patient-reported characteristics of the medical home are associated with improved quality and equity of preventive care, advice on health habits, and emergency department use. We used adjusted risk ratios to examine the association between medical home characteristics and care measures based on the 2010 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. Medical home characteristics are associated with 6 of the 11 outcome measures, including flu shots, smoking advice, exercise advice, nutrition advice, all advice, and emergency department visits. Educational and income groups benefit relatively equally from medical home characteristics. However, compared with insurance and access to a provider, medical home characteristics have little influence on overall disparities in care. In sum, our findings support that medical home characteristics can improve quality and reduce emergency visits but we find no evidence that medical home characteristics alleviate disparities in care.
This study examines whether paid sick leave and hours worked per week are associated with receipt of recommended well-child visits, preventive dental care, influenza vaccines, obesity screening, and vision screening among U.S. children aged 0 to 17 years whose mothers were employed using data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. Residual inclusion instrumental variables methods were used to address unobserved confounding related to maternal employment and child health care use. Instruments were the industry-specific mean of paid leave and hours worked. Fewer than half of children received the recommended number of well-child visits and dental care; only 14% of children received an influenza vaccine in the past year. Paid sick leave was associated with increased adherence to recommended well-child visits (marginal probability, 0.12; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.23, 0.01), preventive dental care (marginal probability, 0.28; 95% CI = 0.34, 0.33), and receipt of the influenza vaccine (marginal probability, 0.09; 95% CI = 0.13, 0.05 ).
We examined moderating effects of professional satisfaction on physicians’ motivation to adhere to diabetes guidelines associated with pay-for-performance incentives. We merged cross-sectional survey data on attitudes, from 156 primary physicians, with prospective medical record-sourced data on guideline adherence and census data on ambulatory-care population characteristics. We examined moderating effects by testing theory-driven models for satisfied versus discontented physicians, using partial least squares structural equation modeling. Results show that attitudes motivated, while norms suppressed, adherence to guidelines among discontented physicians. Separate models for satisfied versus discontented physicians revealed motivational differences. Satisfied physicians disregarded intrinsic and extrinsic influences and biases. Discontented physicians, alienated by social pressure, favored personal inclinations. To improve adherence to guidelines among discontented physicians, incentives should align with personal attitudes and incorporate promotional campaigns countering resentment of peer and organizational pressure.
Personal prescription drug importation occurs in the United States because of the high cost of U.S. medicines and lower cost of foreign equivalents. Importation carries a risk of exposure to counterfeit (i.e., falsified, fraudulent), adulterated, and substandard drugs. Inadequate health insurance may increase the risk of importation. We use inverse probability weighted marginal structural models and data on 87,494 individuals from the 2011-2013 National Health Interview Survey to estimate the marginal association between no health insurance and importation within U.S. subpopulations. The marginal prevalence difference [95% confidence limits] for those without (prevalence = 0.031) versus those with health insurance was 0.016 [0.011, 0.021]. The prevalence difference was higher among persons who were Hispanic, born in Latin America, Russia, or Europe, traveled to developing countries, and did not use the Internet to fill prescriptions or to find health information. Health insurance coverage may effectively reduce importation, especially among particular subpopulations.
Although the importance of safety regulations is highly emphasized in hospitals, nurses frequently work around, or intentionally bypass, safety regulations. We argue that work-arounds occur because adhering to safety regulations usually requires more time and work process design often lacks complementarity with safety regulations. Our main proposition is that mindfulness is associated with a decrease in occupational safety failures through a decrease in work-arounds. First, we propose that individual mindfulness may prevent the depletion of motivational resources caused by worrying about the consequences of time lost when adhering to safety regulations. Second, we argue that collective mindfulness may provide nursing teams with a cognitive infrastructure that facilitates the detection and adaptation of work processes. The results of a multilevel analysis of 580 survey responses from nurses are consistent with our propositions. Our multilevel analytic approach enables us to account for the unique variance in work-arounds that individual and collective mindfulness explain.
A difference-in-difference approach was used to compare the effects of same-sex domestic partnership, civil union, and marriage policies on same- and different-sex partners who could have benefitted from their partners’ employer-based insurance (EBI) coverage. Same-sex partners had 78% lower odds (Marginal Effect = –21%) of having EBI compared with different-sex partners, adjusting for socioeconomic and health-related factors. Same-sex partners living in states that recognized same-sex marriage or domestic partnership had 89% greater odds of having EBI compared with those in states that did not recognize same-sex unions (ME = 5%). The impact of same-sex legislation on increasing take-up of dependent EBI coverage among lesbians, gay men, and bisexual individuals was modest, and domestic partnership legislation was equally as effective as same-sex marriage in increasing same-sex partner EBI coverage. Extending dependent EBI coverage to same-sex partners can mitigate gaps in coverage for a segment of the lesbians, gay men, and bisexual population but will not eliminate them.
Research on the effects of pay-for-performance (P4P) in health care indicates largely disappointing results. This central finding, however, may mask important heterogeneity in the effects of P4P. We conducted a literature review to assess whether hospital and physician performance in P4P vary by patient and catchment area factors, organizational and structural capabilities, and P4P program characteristics. Several findings emerged: organizational size, practice type, teaching status, and physician age and gender modify performance in P4P. For physician practices and hospitals, a higher proportion of poor and minority patients is consistently associated with worse performance. Other theoretically influential characteristics—including information technology and staffing levels—yield mixed results. Inconsistent and contradictory effects of bonus likelihood, bonus size, and marginal costs on performance in P4P suggest organizations have not responded strategically to financial incentives. We conclude that extant heterogeneity in the effects of P4P does not fundamentally alter current assessments about its effectiveness.
In response to evolving policies and conditions, hospitals have increased health information technology (HIT) adoption and strived to improve hospital–physician integration. While evidence suggests that both HIT and integration confer independent benefits, when combined, they may provide complementary means to achieve high performance or overlap to offset each other’s contribution. We explore this relationship in the context of hospital adherence to evidence-based practices (EBPs). Using the American Hospital Association’s Annual and IT Supplement surveys, and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’s Hospital Compare, we estimate the independent relationships and interactions between HIT and hospital–physician integration with respect to EBP adherence. HIT adoption and tight (but not loose) integration are independently associated with greater adherence to EBPs. The interaction between HIT adoption and tight integration is negative, consistent with an offsetting association between HIT adoption and integration in their relationship to EBP adherence. This finding reveals the need to be aware of potential substitutive effects from simultaneous pursuit of multiple approaches to performance improvement.
We examine consumers’ use of publicized quality information in Medicare home health care markets, where consumer cost sharing and travel costs are absent. We report two findings. First, agencies with high quality scores are more likely to be preferred by consumers after the introduction of a public reporting program than before. Second, consumers’ use of publicized quality information differs by patient group. Community-based patients have slightly larger responses to public reporting than hospital-discharged patients. Patients with functional limitations at the start of their care, at least among hospital-discharged patients, have a larger response to the reported functional outcome measure than those without functional limitations. In all cases of significant marginal effects, magnitudes are small. We conclude that the current public reporting approach is unlikely to have critical impacts on home health agency choice. Identifying and releasing quality information that is meaningful to consumers may help increase consumers’ use of public reports.
In order to better understand what threatens vulnerable populations’ access to primary care, it is important to understand the factors associated with closing safety net clinics. This article examines how a clinic’s financial position, productivity, and community characteristics are associated with its risk of closure. We examine patterns of closures among private-run primary care clinics (PCCs) in California between 2006 and 2012. We use a discrete-time proportional hazard model to assess relative hazard ratios of covariates, and a random-effect hazard model to adjust for unobserved heterogeneity among PCCs. We find that lower net income from patient care, smaller amount of government grants, and lower productivity were associated with significantly higher risk of PCC closure. We also find that federally qualified health centers and nonfederally qualified health centers generally faced the same risk factors of closure. These results underscore the critical role of financial incentives in the long-term viability of safety net clinics.
While preventing health care–associated infections (HAIs) can save lives and reduce health care costs, efforts designed to eliminate HAIs have had mixed results. Variability in contextual factors such as work culture and management practices has been suggested as a potential explanation for inconsistent results across organizations and interventions. We examine goal-setting as a factor contributing to program outcomes in eight hospitals focused on preventing central line–associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs). We conducted qualitative case studies to compare higher- and lower-performing hospitals, and explored differences in contextual factors that might contribute to performance variation. We present a goal commitment framework that characterizes factors associated with successful CLABSI program outcomes. Across 194 key informant interviews, internal and external moderators and characteristics of the goal itself differentiated actors’ goal commitment at higher- versus lower-performing hospitals. Our findings have implications for organizations struggling to prevent HAIs, as well as informing the broader goal commitment literature.
Conceptual frameworks in health care do not address mechanisms whereby teamwork processes affect quality of care. We seek to fill this gap by applying a framework of teamwork processes to compare different patterns of primary care performance over time. We thematically analyzed 114 primary care staff interviews across 17 primary care clinics. We purposefully selected clinics using diabetes quality of care over 3 years using four categories: consistently high, improving, worsening, and consistently low. Analyses compared participant responses within and between performance categories. Differences were observed among performance categories for action processes (monitoring progress and coordination), transition processes (goal specification and strategy formulation), and interpersonal processes (conflict management and affect management). Analyses also revealed emergent concepts related to psychological and organizational context that were reported to affect team processes. This study is a first step toward a comprehensive model of how teamwork processes might affect quality of care.
Objectives: To evaluate the Affordable Care Act’s dependent coverage mandate impact on insurance take-up and health services use through the second full year of implementation. Data: Medical Expenditure Panel Survey from 2006 to 2012. Study Design: Difference-in-difference regressions comparing pre-/postpolicy-outcome changes between 19- to 25-year-olds and 27- to 34-year-olds. Principal Findings: Following significant increases in 2011, insurance take-up among 19- to 25-year-olds leveled off overall in 2012. However, increases in coverage for Black young adults were higher in 2012 compared to 2011. Despite increased coverage, there is little evidence of an overall effect on health services use postmandate. Evidence points to increased doctor visits and emergency department visits among Hispanics in the first year postmandate. Conclusions: The Affordable Care Act young adult mandate led to significant gains in insurance take-up, though evidence suggests that the bulk of the gains occurred in the first year after the mandate. Gains for Black young adults appear to have picked up in 2012.
This article provides a thorough empirical analysis of random variation in shared savings arrangements. It uses claims data from seven provider coalitions that applied for certification to become Medicaid accountable care organizations (ACOs) in New Jersey to conduct Monte Carlo simulations under varying assumptions about true ACO savings. Among all the ACOs examined, the observed savings rate can be several percentage points higher or lower than the assumed true savings rate, leading to large probabilities of Type I and Type II error in determining the existence of savings. Although the effects of random variation are smaller for larger ACOs, the ACO-level coefficient of variation in health care spending also stands out as a highly relevant parameter. The risks of overpayment and underpayment can be minimized through modified specification of the savings measurement methodology. These findings have implications for the terms of shared savings arrangements negotiated between payers and providers.
We studied differences in access to large or accredited cancer programs as a possible explanation for geographic disparities in adherence to the national guideline on lymph node assessment for Stages I to III colon cancer. State cancer registries were linked with Medicare claims of patients diagnosed from 2006 to 2008 from Appalachian counties of four states. Metropolitan and nonmetropolitan patients differed on adherence, proximity to high-volume or accredited hospitals, and hospital type. We modeled effects of hospital type on adherence with ordinary least squares and instrumental variables (instrumenting for hospital type with relative distance). The evidence was strongest for improved adherence in high-volume hospitals for nonmetropolitan patients. We estimate that roughly 100 deaths might be prevented over 5 years among each year’s incident cases if the nonmetropolitan disparity in hospital volume were eliminated nationally. We conclude that regionalization or targeting smaller hospitals would improve adherence in nonmetropolitan areas, but also argue for improving adherence generally.
To evaluate the potential for a patient-centered medical home initiative to reduce utilization and cost while improving quality, we examined a natural experiment involving 11 primary care practices in Cincinnati, Ohio, that participated in the Aligning Forces for Quality Multi-Payer Patient Centered Medical Home pilot. Our research design involved difference-in-difference analyses, comparing changes in utilization, costs, and quality between patients attributed to pilot practices compared with those attributed to a matched comparison cohort after 2 years of active engagement by the practices. The Cincinnati pilot was associated with a reduction of ambulatory care–sensitive emergency department visits of approximately 0.7 per 1,000 member months or approximately 22.6% (p = .01). While there was a reduction in total costs of care of $7,679 per 1,000 member months, the difference did not reach statistical significance. After 2 years of the pilot, lipid testing in diabetics had increased by 2.7 percentage points (a 3.3% improvement; p < .0001). Patient-centered medical homes have the potential to improve the quality of care and reduce emergency department use but expectations for cost control in a relatively short time horizon and absent other changes may be unrealistic.
Several states have received waivers to expand Medicaid to poor adults under the Affordable Care Act using more cost sharing than the program traditionally allows. We synthesize literature on the effects of cost sharing, focusing on studies of low-income U.S. populations from 1995 to 2014. Literature suggests that cost sharing has a deterrent effect on initiation of treatments, and can reduce utilization of ongoing treatments. Furthermore, cost sharing may be difficult for low-income populations to understand, patients often lack sufficient information to choose medical treatment, and cost sharing may be difficult to balance within the budgets of poor adults. Gaps in the literature include evidence of long-term effects of cost sharing on health and financial well-being, evidence related to effectiveness of cost sharing combined with patient education, and evidence related to targeted programs that use financial incentives for wellness. Literature underscores the need for evaluation of the effects of cost sharing on health status and spending, particularly among the poorest adults.
The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has historically served a disproportionately male patient population with lower income and greater rates of mental illness than non-VHA populations. The generalizability of research based on VHA enrollees is unknown because the overlap between VHA and non-VHA populations has never been empirically examined. This study used 2013 National Health Interview Survey data to examine the extent to which VHA enrollees had similar demographic and health characteristics as individuals with Medicaid, Medicare, or private insurance coverage, based on propensity score models. A majority of male VHA enrollees were similar to Medicare beneficiaries suggesting greater generalizability of VHA studies than commonly hypothesized. Overlap declined when comparing with Medicaid enrollees or privately insured individuals, suggesting more limited generalizability of VHA studies to these populations.
Medicare Part D improved medication adherence among the elderly, but to date, its effect on disparities in adherence remains unknown. We estimated Part D impact on racial/ethnic disparities in adherence to cardiovascular medications among seniors, using pooled data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (2002-2010) on 14,221 Medicare recipients (65+ years) and 3,456 near-elderly controls (60-64 years). Study sample included White, Black, or Hispanic respondents who used at least one cardiovascular medication. Twelve-month adherence was measured as having an overall proportion of days covered ≥80%. Adherence disparities were defined according to the Institute of Medicine framework. Using difference-in-differences logistic regression, we found Part D to be associated with a 16-percentage-point decrease in the White–Hispanic disparity in overall adherence among seniors, net of the change among controls. Black–White disparities worsened only among men, by 21 percentage points. Increasing access and improving quality of medication use among disadvantaged seniors should remain a policy priority.
This article develops a conceptual framework for implementation of value-based payment (VBP) reform and then draws on that framework to systematically examine six distinct multi-stakeholder coalition VBP initiatives in three different regions of the United States. The VBP initiatives deploy the following payment models: reference pricing, "shadow" primary care capitation, bundled payment, pay for performance, shared savings within accountable care organizations, and global payment. The conceptual framework synthesizes prior models of VBP implementation. It describes how context, project objectives, payment and care delivery strategies, and the barriers and facilitators to translating strategy into implementation affect VBP implementation and value for patients. We next apply the framework to six case examples of implementation, and conclude by discussing the implications of the case examples and the conceptual framework for future practice and research.
This article examines the effect on quality improvement of two common but distinct approaches to organizational learning: importing best practices (an externally oriented approach rooted in learning by imitating others’ best practices) and internal creative problem solving (an internally oriented approach rooted in learning by experimenting with self-generated solutions). We propose that independent and interaction effects of these approaches depend on where organizations are in their improvement journey – initial push or later phase. We examine this contingency in hospitals focused on improving treatment time for patients with heart attacks. Our results show that importing best practices helps hospitals achieve initial phase but not later phase improvement. Once hospitals enter the later phase of their efforts, however, significant improvement requires creative problem solving as well. Together, our results suggest that importing best practices delivers greater short-term improvement, but continued improvement depends on creative problem solving.
Twenty-seven years after the first public release by the U.S. government of data on the quality of hospital care, public reporting for consumers has expanded substantially. Despite the growth in public reporting activities, there is limited evidence of their use by consumers in ways that significantly affect health care delivery. Support for public reporting continues, in part, because of the face value of transparency. The limited impact of reporting efforts is plausibly due to flaws in the content, design, and implementation of existing public reports rather than inherent limitations of reporting. Substantial work is still needed for public reports to achieve their potential for engaging and informing consumers. We present a vision statement and 10 recommendations to achieve this potential.
There is significant interest in building the next generation of public reporting tools that will more effectively engage consumers and better enable them to make use of comparative performance information when selecting a provider. Demand for public reporting tools that make health care cost and quality information transparent is fueled by a variety of market forces underway. A host of public reporting efforts and studies have identified a number of challenges, highlighting that, we still do not understand how best to design public reports to meet the needs of the consumer. We identify five areas for additional research that, if addressed, could foster better design and delivery of quality and cost information to consumers.
The English National Health Service’s public reporting website—known as NHS Choices—has been incorporating anecdotal comments from patients about primary and hospital care since 2007. Publicly reporting patients’ narrative comments along with numerical ratings of their experience and clinical quality metrics presents opportunities as well as challenges for reporting systems. This article reviews the lessons learned in England that could be useful to other health systems that are considering a similar approach. We explore five key design considerations for publicly reporting anecdotal comments—including how to collect, moderate, and display comments and how to encourage the public and the health care providers use them. While anecdotal comments might represent an untapped seam of valuable information about service quality and a potential hook for engaging patients to use comparative performance data, the jury is still out on where narrative comments fit in the complex landscape of quality measurement and reporting.
Research on hospitalist programs has primarily focused on large, urban facilities. To fill a gap in the literature on hospitalist use in rural hospitals, the authors conducted a national survey of 402 rural hospitals with 100 or fewer beds that had reported having hospitalists. The survey examined reasons for using hospitalists, characteristics of hospitalist practices, and the impacts of hospitalist use in rural settings. Rural hospitals most commonly establish a hospitalist program to address medical staff requests, call coverage, and quality issues. Respondents report positive impacts of hospitalist programs on quality of care and primary care physician recruitment and retention, but mixed financial impacts. Assessments of the impact of hospitalists in rural hospitals need to take into account the variety of practitioner specialties functioning as hospitalists, the amount of time they spend as hospitalists, and the multiple roles they play in the rural hospital and community.
Medicare and Medicaid dual-eligible beneficiaries use more medical care and experience worse health outcomes than Medicare-only beneficiaries. This article points to a possible inefficiency in the skilled nursing facility (SNF) admission process, specifically that patients and SNFs are partially matched based on dual-eligibility status, and investigates its influence on patients’ SNF length of stay. Using a set of fee-for-service beneficiaries newly admitted for Medicare-paid SNF care, we document two findings: (1) compared with Medicare-only patients, dual-eligibles are more likely to be discharged to SNFs with low nurse-to-patient ratios and (2) dual-eligibles are more likely to become long-stay nursing home residents than Medicare-only beneficiaries if treated in SNFs with low nurse-to-patient ratios. We conclude that changes in the current SNF care referral process have the potential to reduce excess SNF utilization by dual-eligible beneficiaries and could help reduce spending by both Medicare and Medicaid.
Public reports on provider performance can help guide consumers’ health care decisions, yet consumer awareness and use of public reports is low and may be even lower among racial/ethnic minorities. In this qualitative research article, we describe activities implemented by multi-stakeholder alliances in six U.S. communities to increase minorities’ awareness of public reports. We also describe alliances’ motivation for deliberately targeting greater awareness among minorities. We found that alliances’ decision was influenced by the proportion of minorities and perceptions of race-based disparities in care in the community. To raise awareness, alliances collaborated with minority-serving organizations to (a) advertise their web-based public report using ethnic media outlets, (b) present their public reporting website during health education outreach events held in minority communities, and (c) translate their public report into multiple languages. We conclude that community partnerships are a promising mechanism for targeting efforts to increase awareness of public reports in minority communities.
In September 2009, federal funding for health care–associated infection (HAI) program development was dispersed through a cooperative agreement to 51 state and territorial health departments. From July to September 2011, 69 stakeholders from six states—including state health department employees, representatives from partner organizations, and health care facility employees—were interviewed to assess state HAI program achievements, implementation barriers, and strategies for sustainability. Respondents most frequently cited enhanced HAI surveillance as a program achievement and resource constraints as an implementation barrier. To sustain programs, respondents recommended ongoing support for HAI prevention activities, improved surveillance processes, and maintenance of partnerships. Findings suggest that state-level HAI program growth was achieved during the cooperative agreement but that maintenance of programs faces challenges.
Literature indicates favorable selection among Medicare Advantage (MA) enrollees compared with fee-for-service (FFS) enrollees. This study examined whether favorable selection into MA affected readmission rates among Medicare-eligible veterans following hospitalization for congestive heart failure in the Veterans Affairs Health System (VA). We measured total (VA + Medicare FFS) 30-day all-cause readmission rates across hospitals and all of VA. We used Heckman’s correction to adjust readmission rates to be representative of all Medicare-eligible veterans, not just FFS-enrolled veterans. The adjusted all-cause readmission rate among FFS veterans was 27.1% (95% confidence interval [CI] = 26.5% to 27.7%), while the adjusted readmission rate among Medicare-eligible veterans was 25.3% (95% CI = 23.6% to 27.1%) after correcting for favorable selection. Readmission rate estimates among FFS veterans generalize to all Medicare-eligible veterans only after accounting for favorable selection into MA. Estimation of quality metrics should carefully consider sample selection to produce valid policy inferences.
What are the barriers to voluntary take-up of high-deductible plans? We address this question using a large-scale employer survey conducted after an open-enrollment period in which a new high-deductible plan was first introduced. Only 3% of the employees chose this plan, despite the respondents’ recognition of its financial advantages. Employees who believed that the high-deductible plan provided access to top physicians in the area were three times more likely to choose it than employees who did not share this belief. A framed field experiment using a similar choice menu showed that displaying additional financial information did not increase high-deductible plan take-up. However, when plans were presented as identical except for the deductible, respondents were highly likely to choose the high-deductible plan, especially in a two-way choice. These results suggest that informing plan choosers about high-deductible plans’ health access provisions may affect choice more strongly than focusing on their financial advantages.
Health care consumers often make choices that are imperfectly informed and inconsistent with their expressed preferences. Past research suggests that these shortcomings become more pronounced as choices become more complex, through either additional options or more performance metrics. But it is unclear why this is true: Consumer choice remains a "black box" that research has scarcely illuminated. In this article, we identify four pathways through which complexity may impair consumer choice. We examine these pathways using data from an experiment in which consumers (hypothetically) selected a primary care physician. Some of the loss of decision quality accompanying more complex choice sets can be explained by consumers’ skills and decision-making style, but even after accounting for these factors, complexity undermines the quality of decision making in ways that cannot be fully explained. We conclude by discussing implications for report designers, sponsors, and policy makers aspiring to promote consumer empowerment and health care quality.
Increased interest in the patient-centered medical home (PCMH) among policy makers and practitioners has resulted in a growth of research on the factors that influence its adoption and implementation, yet this research often fails to capture the multidimensional nature of the PCMH and the longitudinal nature of the implementation process. This study documented physician practices’ PCMH capacity across 12 different domains (e.g., extended access, specialist referral, use of patient registry) over a 3-year period (2008-2010). Linear growth models indicated that participation through different types of physician organizations and practice size were associated with different baseline levels of capacity and changes in capacity over time; however, the association varied as a function of the different PCMH dimensions. Differences in PCMH capacity across the 12 domains and time suggest that more attention should be paid to the longitudinal nature of PCMH implementation and the differential challenges associated with its component parts.
Primary care providers frequently recommend, administer, or prescribe health care services that are unlikely to benefit their patients. Yet little is known about how to reduce provider overuse behavior. In the absence of a theoretically grounded causal framework, it is difficult to predict the contexts under which different types of interventions to reduce provider overuse will succeed and under which they will fail. In this article, we present a framework based on the theory of planned behavior that is designed to guide overuse research and intervention development. We describe categories of primary care provider beliefs that lead to the formation of intentions to assess the appropriateness of services, and propose factors that may affect whether the presence of assessment intentions results in an appropriate recommendation. Interventions that have been commonly used to address provider overuse behavior are reviewed within the context of the framework.
There is growing interest in patient-centered care, but there is little guidance about the interventions required for its delivery and whether it leads to better health outcomes. This systematic review evaluates the efficacy of patient-centered care interventions for people with chronic conditions. Thirty randomized controlled trials were identified from health-related databases. The findings indicated that most interventions were based on the notion of empowering care and included attempts to educate consumers or prompt them about how to manage a health consultation. Other common interventions focused on training providers in delivering empowering care. Although it was difficult to draw firm conclusions because of the moderate to high risk of bias of the research designs, this review has shown some promising findings from implementing a patient-centered care approach. There appeared to be benefits associated with this model of care in terms of patient satisfaction and perceived quality of care.
In the coming years, assessing the impact of efforts to reduce hospital readmissions will be important to policy makers and hospitals. To inform such assessments, we sought to define preexisting trends in readmission rates for patients by level of clinical severity using a difference-in-differences analysis of Medicare inpatient claims data from 1997, 2002, and 2007 for patients with acute myocardial infarction and congestive heart failure. We also examined trends in length of stay, in-hospital mortality, and postdischarge mortality by severity level to provide additional context for interpreting readmission rate trends. From 1997 to 2007, the difference in readmission rates between the highest and lowest severity quartiles increased. Length of stay and in-hospital mortality decreased for all patients; however, postdischarge mortality increased for the highest-severity patients and decreased for the lowest-severity patients. Assessments of recent policy reforms and quality improvement programs should account for underlying differential trends in readmission rates based on patient severity.
In recent decades, there has been a growing interest in the design and implementation of systems using public reporting of performance measures to improve performance. In their simplest form, such interventions rest on the market-based logic of consumers using publicly released information to modify their behavior, thereby penalizing poor performers. However, evidence from large-scale efforts to use public reporting of performance measures as an instrumental performance improvement tool suggests that the causal mechanisms involved are much more complex. This article offers a typology of four different plausible causal pathways linking public reporting of performance measures and performance improvement. This typology rests on a variety of conceptual models and a review of available empirical evidence. We then use this typology to discuss the core elements that need to be taken into account in efforts to use public reporting of performance measures as a performance improvement tool.
Increasingly, patient experience surveys are available to provide performance feedback to physician groups. However, limited published literature addresses factors influencing use of these reports for performance improvement. To address this gap, we conducted semistructured interviews with leaders of Massachusetts physician groups. We asked about factors influencing groups’ use of performance data and report characteristics. Motivating characteristics included having group leaders who emphasized a positive patient experience and prioritized patient retention; public reporting was not an important motivator for most groups. Full physician panels were perceived as a barrier to use of reports. Performance reports from a statewide public reporting collaborative were not sufficient for the majority of groups, with many seeking external reports. As policy makers create financial incentives to support performance improvement, assisting leaders to articulate the professional case for patient experience and enhancing the content and timing of performance reports may be important.
Team-based care involving physician assistants and/or nurse practitioners (PA/NPs) in the patient-centered medical home is one approach to improving care quality. However, little is known about how to incorporate PA/NPs into primary care teams. Using data from a large physician group, we describe the division of patients and services (e.g., acute, chronic, preventive, other) between primary care providers for older diabetes patients on panels with varying levels of PA/NP involvement (i.e., no role, supplemental provider, or usual provider of care). Panels with PA/NP usual providers had higher proportions of patients with Medicaid, disability, and depression. Patients with physician usual providers had similar probabilities of visits with supplemental PA/NPs and physicians for all service types. However, patients with PA/NP usual providers had higher probabilities of visits with a supplemental physician. Understanding how patients and services are divided between PA/NPs and physicians will assist in defining provider roles on primary care teams.
Patients who have access to different health care systems, such as Medicare-eligible veterans, may obtain services in either or both health systems. We examined whether quality of diabetes care was associated with care continuity or veterans’ usual source of primary care in a retrospective cohort study of 1,867 Medicare-eligible veterans with diabetes in 2001 to 2004. Underprovision of quality of diabetes care was more common than overprovision. In adjusted analyses, veterans who relied only on Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) for primary care were more likely to be underprovided HbA1c testing than veterans who relied only on Veteran Affairs (VA) for primary care. Dual users of VA and Medicare FFS primary care were significantly more likely to be overprovided HbA1c and microalbumin testing than VA-only users. VA and Medicare providers may need to coordinate more effectively to ensure appropriate diabetes care to Medicare-eligible veterans, because VA reliance was a stronger predictor than care continuity.
Variations in patients’ self-management knowledge, skills, and confidence as measured by the Patient Activation Measure (PAM) have been linked to variations in health behavior and outcomes. In a randomized trial, we tested two blood pressure (BP) control interventions, one grounded in activation principles. Study participants were Black home care patients (N = 587) with uncontrolled hypertension. This article examines intervention impacts on 12-month PAM score change, other predictors of PAM change, and associations between PAM change and BP outcomes. In multivariate models, the interventions did not significantly affect PAM change. Baseline characteristics associated with increased PAM were lower PAM score, higher income, higher health literacy, younger age, lower systolic BP, diabetes, and fewer medications. PAM increase was associated with a modest reduction in diastolic BP but not with improved systolic BP or BP control. Although studies suggest that increasing activation may lead to improved patient outcomes, this study did not find it to be so.
Public reports of provider performance are widespread and the methods used to generate the provider ratings differ across the sponsoring entities. We examined 115 hospital and 27 physician public reports to determine whether report sponsors made the methods used to score providers available and accessible. While nearly all websites made transparent some of the methods used to assess provider performance, we found substantial variation in the extent to which they fully adhered to recommended methods elements identified in the Consumer-Purchaser Disclosure Project’s Patient Charter for performance reporting. Most public reports provided descriptions of the data sources, whether measures were endorsed, and the attribution approach. Least often made transparent were methods descriptions related to advanced provider review and reconsideration of results, reliability assessment, and case-mix adjustment. Future research should do more to identify the core elements that would lead consumer end users to have confidence in public reports.
Efforts to engage consumers in the use of public reports on health care provider performance have met with limited success. Fostering greater engagement will require new approaches that provide consumers with relevant content at the time and in the context they need to make a decision of consequence. To this end, we identify three key factors influencing consumer engagement and show how they manifest in different ways and combinations for four particular choice contexts that appear to offer realistic opportunities for engagement. We analyze how these engagement factors play out differently in each choice context and suggest specific strategies that sponsors of public reports can use in each context. Cross-cutting lessons for report sponsors and policy makers include new media strategies such as a commitment to adaptive web-based reporting, new metrics with richer emotional content, and the use of navigators or advocates to assist consumers with interpreting reports.
Health care overuse contributes to unnecessary expenditures and patient exposure to harm. Understanding and addressing this problem requires a comprehensive set of valid metrics. This article describes and critiques the current state of overuse measurement through a review of the published and gray literature, measures clearinghouses and ongoing work by major measure developers. Our review identified 37 fully specified measures and 123 measurement development opportunities. Many services were considered overuse due to the extension of diagnostic or screening services to low-risk populations. There were more diagnostic or therapeutic overuse measures than for screening or monitoring/surveillance. Imaging services is a major focus of current measures, but opportunities exist to expand overuse measurement in medication, laboratory services. Future development of overuse measures would benefit from new empirical research and clinical guidelines focused on identifying indications or populations for which there is likely to be no or low benefit.
Research suggests that more than half of all emergency department (ED) visits in the United States are for nonurgent conditions, leading to billions of dollars in potentially avoidable spending annually. In this study, we examine the effects of co-payment changes on ED utilization among children enrolled in ALL Kids, Alabama’s Children’s Health Insurance Program We separately model the effect of the 2003 co-payment increases on the monthly probability of any ED visit, and visits within three severity categories, using linear probability models that control for beneficiary characteristics and time trends that are allowed to vary in the pre- and postperiods. We observe a small decline in the probability of ED visits 1 year after the co-payment increase. However, low-severity visits, which we hypothesize to be more price sensitive, show no significant evidence of a decline. Our study suggests that the modest co-payment changes were not effective in improving the efficiency of ED utilization.
Control for area differences in population health (casemix adjustment) is necessary to measure geographic variations in medical spending. Studies use various casemix adjustment methods, resulting in very different geographic variation estimates. We study casemix adjustment methodological issues and evaluate alternative approaches using claims from 1.6 million Medicare beneficiaries in 60 representative communities. Two key casemix adjustment methods—controlling for patient conditions obtained from diagnoses on claims and expenditures of those at the end of life—were evaluated. We failed to find evidence of bias in the former approach attributable to area differences in physician diagnostic patterns, as others have found, and found that the assumption underpinning the latter approach—that persons close to death are equally sick across areas—cannot be supported. Diagnosis-based approaches are more appropriate when current rather than prior year diagnoses are used. Population health likely explains more than 75% to 85% of cost variations across fixed sets of areas.