Paul Bass of the New Haven Independent interviewed both candidates for Governor about their plans and a lot of the questions related to health care. Foley wants to emphasize community-based alternatives over increasing reimbursements to nursing homes; Malloy believes that both are needed as CT’s population gets older and health care needs increase. Malloy supports SustiNet as a means for CT to implement health reform; Foley believes SustiNet is too expensive and the uninsured is not a big problem in CT. In HUSKY, Malloy wants to enroll every eligible child; Foley emphasized rooting out fraud by individuals. Foley wants to privatize Riverview Hospital and Southbury Training School; Malloy does not and wants to address unmet needs for mental health care.
Ellen Andrews
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Monday, August 30, 2010
On the passing of Brandon Levan
We have some very sad news to share. Brandon Levan passed away last week after a three month bout with cancer. According to his brother, “Due to his strong will and character, he never gave in and he fought the cancer to his last breath and passed away with dignity and bravery.” Brandon was a very committed volunteer with the CT Health Policy Project for the last two years and recently joined our Board of Directors. He graduated from Yale in 2008 and became a systems analyst/developer. Earlier this year, he quit his job to apply to medical school and become a healer. Brandon had a strong sense of how the health care system was failing consumers and he worked hard to change policies. He worked with the Project and New Haven Legal Assistance on PCCM outreach across the New Haven and Hartford communities, he attended meetings and testified at the Capitol, and was a main author of our candidate briefing book this year. Throughout his illness, he was still submitting chapters to the book. His last message to us was upbeat; he talked about how the experience of his illness made even more clear to him the unfairness in the health care system and how badly it needs fixing. Brandon was an inspiration to students, volunteers and staff here at the Project and will be dearly missed.
Ellen Andrews
Ellen Andrews
Friday, August 27, 2010
PCCM/HUSKY Primary Care now on Facebook
The effort to move PCCM forward in Connecticut is taking a new turn - yes, we are joining Facebook! Type in “HUSKY Primary Care” on Facebook. The goal of this new group is to get people on or interested in HUSKY to talk about the exciting new option of PCCM/HUSKY Primary Care, with each other and with their “friends.”
Come join us and help get the word out!
Come join us and help get the word out!
CSG/ERC meeting slides online
Health panel slides from last week’s CSG/ERC annual meeting in Maine are online. They include Sen. Richard Moore (MA) and Trish Riley/Karynlee Harrington (ME, Dirigo) on payment reform, Lisa Letourneau (ME Quality Counts) on patient-centered medical homes, and Alan Weil (NASHP) on state roles in national health reform.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Admitting mistakes and making an offer reduces malpractice suits
A new study has found that responding to medical errors with full disclosure, an apology and an offer of compensation significantly reduces lawsuits, costs and the time it takes to resolve claims. Since the policy was instituted in 2001, malpractice lawsuits filed against the University of Michigan Health System monthly dropped from 2.13 to 0.75 per 100,000 patient encounters. Liability costs dropped by more than half. The health system reviews each claim to determine if there was an error – if not, they defend vigorously, if so they apologize and make an offer to compensate the victim. It would be interesting to see what the impact on total health costs (medical malpractice is often offered as a driver of skyrocketing costs, Michigan implemented med mal reform in 1994) and on the quality of patient care. There is evidence that linking the apology to resulting improvements in patient safety reduces lawsuits; many patients are not seeking money but want to make sure the same mistake doesn’t happen again.
Ellen Andrews
Ellen Andrews
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Updated health policy basics
Just in time for Back to School, the CT Health Policy Project has updated our health policy basics module for student, intern and volunteer training.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
More health policy at CSG/ERC meeting
Last week’s CSG/ERC annual meeting in Portland ME included talks by some health policy rock stars.
Sen. Richard Moore, Senate Chair of MA’s Joint Committee on Health Care Financing, spoke in the Value to Volume panel. He described MA’s progress toward rewarding higher quality providers in the state employee health plan, using public reporting, and tiering provider payments as tools. As much of health spending is focused in specialty care, they began there. Challenges included accurately attributing the right patients to the right providers, problems with consumer choice (if there are too few providers available consumers can’t use the economic incentives), and the reliability of provider quality assessments (ratings of providers with very few state employees may not be meaningful). He updated the committee on progress toward statewide cost control. Challenges include workforce shortages (if consumers do not have a choice of providers, cost sharing incentives can’t be effective), creating an all-payer database, public and provider resistance to tiering, adoption by self-insured plans, and creating improvement incentives and tools for low-performing providers. Future plans include statewide health information technology adoption by 2014, requiring meaningful HIT use for licensure, expanding the number of primary care providers, standardizing claims processing, and creating patient and family advisory councils to engage consumers.
Karynlee Harrington, Director of the Dirigo Health Agency, talked about Maine’s progress toward quality-based purchasing. Maine has 39 hospitals for 1.3 million people, ED use is 30% higher than the US average, and has $400 million in avoidable hospitalizations annually, all driven by the fee-for-service environment. In response the legislature created a payment reform workgroup that developed a set of six guiding principles. She outlined the Maine Health Management Coalition that includes the state’s major employers in quality-based payment reform, and the patient-centered medical home initiative with 26 sites currently and plans to grow.
Alan Weil, Executive Director of the National Academy for State Health Policy, described the opportunities and challenges for state policymakers in national health reform. He described choices involved in development of state insurance exchanges, changes to regulation of health insurance, the need to simplify and integrate eligibility systems, address workforce shortages and system capacity, benefit design challenges, challenges for dual eligibles, data needs, population health goals, and engaging the public.
Elliott Fisher, from the Dartmouth Atlas program, described his pioneering work outlining the disconnected goals of our current utilization-based health care system that fosters high health care spending but low quality outcomes. He described how the health care market is different from other markets in that supply can drive its own demand (who says no to a doctor that says you need another test), preference driven care, and too few incentives for effective care. He outlined the need for accountable systems of care (accountable care organizations), thoughtful workforce policies, and end-of-life care.
Ellen Andrews
Sen. Richard Moore, Senate Chair of MA’s Joint Committee on Health Care Financing, spoke in the Value to Volume panel. He described MA’s progress toward rewarding higher quality providers in the state employee health plan, using public reporting, and tiering provider payments as tools. As much of health spending is focused in specialty care, they began there. Challenges included accurately attributing the right patients to the right providers, problems with consumer choice (if there are too few providers available consumers can’t use the economic incentives), and the reliability of provider quality assessments (ratings of providers with very few state employees may not be meaningful). He updated the committee on progress toward statewide cost control. Challenges include workforce shortages (if consumers do not have a choice of providers, cost sharing incentives can’t be effective), creating an all-payer database, public and provider resistance to tiering, adoption by self-insured plans, and creating improvement incentives and tools for low-performing providers. Future plans include statewide health information technology adoption by 2014, requiring meaningful HIT use for licensure, expanding the number of primary care providers, standardizing claims processing, and creating patient and family advisory councils to engage consumers.
Karynlee Harrington, Director of the Dirigo Health Agency, talked about Maine’s progress toward quality-based purchasing. Maine has 39 hospitals for 1.3 million people, ED use is 30% higher than the US average, and has $400 million in avoidable hospitalizations annually, all driven by the fee-for-service environment. In response the legislature created a payment reform workgroup that developed a set of six guiding principles. She outlined the Maine Health Management Coalition that includes the state’s major employers in quality-based payment reform, and the patient-centered medical home initiative with 26 sites currently and plans to grow.
Alan Weil, Executive Director of the National Academy for State Health Policy, described the opportunities and challenges for state policymakers in national health reform. He described choices involved in development of state insurance exchanges, changes to regulation of health insurance, the need to simplify and integrate eligibility systems, address workforce shortages and system capacity, benefit design challenges, challenges for dual eligibles, data needs, population health goals, and engaging the public.
Elliott Fisher, from the Dartmouth Atlas program, described his pioneering work outlining the disconnected goals of our current utilization-based health care system that fosters high health care spending but low quality outcomes. He described how the health care market is different from other markets in that supply can drive its own demand (who says no to a doctor that says you need another test), preference driven care, and too few incentives for effective care. He outlined the need for accountable systems of care (accountable care organizations), thoughtful workforce policies, and end-of-life care.
Ellen Andrews
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
