Archives
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| Date | Author | Post Title | Post Summary | Topics |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 20, 2011 | Robert F. Graboyes, Ph.D. | Small Business and Exchanges: SHOP Till You Drop | Assuming the 2010 health care law survives through 2014, one of the big questions is the future of small-group insurance plans – those in which the employer chooses and administers a plan or plans for employees. The health insurance exchanges built into the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) create mechanisms for small-group survival, but also powerful incentives for their dissolution. | Costs & Economic Analysis | Health Reform |
| Dec 15, 2011 | Wendy Lynch, Ph.D. | Paying Patients to Take Drugs or Helping Them Make Informed Choices? | While there is certainly evidence that cost influences a person’s likelihood of refilling medications, price is only one of many factors. It’s not a single conscious choice between taking a pill or not; it is ongoing management of a complex array of daily and weekly activities. | Chronic Disease | Public Health |
| Dec 13, 2011 | Rochelle Sharpe | The Key to Longevity? A Healthy Lifestyle | The secrets of longevity are not so secret any more. Scientists know a lot about how diet, exercise, and social connections can extend the human lifespan. Study after study has shown that genes don’t affect life expectancy nearly as much as the environment.Enter Dan Buettner, best-selling author of The Blue Zones, who wrote a fascinating account of four places in the world where people live the longest – outliving Americans by more than a decade. | Public Health |
| Dec 8, 2011 | Bruce Allen Chernof, M.D. | Hiding in Plain Sight: Seeing the Person Beyond the Patient | High-quality, cost-effective health care delivery is all about targeting: the right care, by the right provider, at the right time, in the right place, and for the right cost. It sounds straightforward, almost easy. The challenge to getting it right is understanding the range of variables in a person’s life that drive health care use and costs. | Chronic Disease | Medicare |
| Dec 6, 2011 | Joanne Kenen | Finding The Sweet Spot Where Geriatrics, Palliative Care, and System Integration Intersect | Dealing with the hard stuff – the very sick, the complex, the dying – is the essence of quality health care in an aging society. | Aging | Chronic Disease | Hospitals |
| Dec 1, 2011 | Charles Roehrig, Ph.D. | What is “Sustainable” Health Spending? (Part I) | There is surprisingly little consensus – and not even much being written – about what growth rate would be “sustainable”? Defining sustainable growth and establishing a credible target is one of our top research priorities. | Health Reform | Medicare |
| Nov 29, 2011 | Laura Segal | Healthier Americans for a Healthier Economy | Preventing disease is one of the most common sense ways to improve health in America. But it is also a major factor for improving the economy. | Chronic Disease | Obesity | Public Health |
| Nov 22, 2011 | Gloria Eldridge, Ph.D., Joanne Lynn, M.D., M.A. | After CLASS: A Long-Term Care Insurance System | Let’s not capitalize on or mourn the loss of CLASS for too long. We have work to do – and we do not have the luxury of time before forging ahead. | Aging | Health Reform |
| Nov 17, 2011 | Danielle Marshall | Boosting Creative Play Through Loose Parts | The use of open-ended play materials is as old as play itself... having seen the rich experiences that develop as children engage in play with open-ended materials it is hard not to advocate for their increased use. | Women & Children |
| Nov 16, 2011 | Joanne Kenen | The Politics of Prevention | If there’s one thing everyone in Washington can agree on it’s that prevention is good. And that’s about as far as the agreement goes. As for the rest of it – who is responsible for prevention, how to define prevention, what is the government’s role in prevention, how much to spend on prevention and when to spend it – is not so clear, and wrapped up in the bitter politics (and difficult economics) of the day. | Health Reform | Public Health |
| Nov 10, 2011 | Wendy Lynch, Ph.D. | The Biggest Health Disparity of All: Control (Part 2) | In many cases the health care system has determined that certain people are incapable of understanding their health issues and making their own decisions. | Aging | Health Disparities |
| Nov 8, 2011 | Wendy Lynch, Ph.D. | The Biggest Health Disparity of All: Control (Part 1) | A recent study confirms elderly and minority customers get higher-cost hospital care than other more affluent white customers and are more often exposed to harmful, even deadly outcomes. | Aging | Health Disparities | Health Reform |
| Nov 3, 2011 | Beth Costello, M.B.A. | Can Partnerships be Mobilized and Sustained to Improve Community Health? | In your community, do block groups, farmer’s markets, city planners, community clinics, emergency services, and departments of health work elbow-to-elbow, or do they act in organizational silos? Improving population health was an important aspect of the Affordable Care Act, which led to the emergence of new community-based strategies that were launched in part from the public health campaign. | Public Health | Public Health Preparedness |
| Nov 1, 2011 | Gloria Eldridge, Ph.D. | CLASS Act Gone, But Costs of Aging Remain | The Obama Administration abandoned the Community Living Services and Supports (CLASS) Act last month. This public long-term care insurance program was slated to be the country’s first attempt at dealing with an aging Boomer population that is in denial about what it costs to grow old in America. | Aging | Health Reform | Public Health |
| Oct 27, 2011 | Joanne Lynn, M.D., M.A. | Evidence-Based Interventions: Replicate or Adapt? | Carefully done research on small numbers in a few settings will not be enough to guide practical implementation of process redesign. | Aging | Chronic Disease | Hospitals |
| Oct 25, 2011 | Zack Cooper | Our (Limited) Policy Toolbox for Slowing Health Care Spending Growth | Nearly every developed country is under substantial pressure to slow the growth in health care spending. However, as we have seen, while virtually every country has pledged to spend less, few have been successful. | Costs & Economic Analysis | Health Reform |
| Oct 20, 2011 | Danielle Marshall | Running, Chasing, Fleeing: Why We Need Rough and Tumble Play | If we can look past our fears that rough and tumble play breeds aggression, we can focus on its merits. | Public Health | Women & Children |
| Oct 18, 2011 | Rochelle Sharpe | Are Health Apps the Cure for Anything That Ails You? | The store offers a mindboggling array of creative apps, including ones that calculate calories burned during exercise, create soundtracks to help people fall asleep, and display pictures that can elicit memories from Alzheimer’s patients. If the store doesn’t offer something for what ails you now, it probably will soon. | Information Technology | Public Health |
| Oct 13, 2011 | Wendy Lynch, Ph.D. | Note to Consumers: The Rules in Health Care Are a Little Different | Because consumers don’t realize that the price of health care products and services is set very differently than prices in other markets, it leads to perceptions and behaviors that can be expensive and even dangerous. | Health Policy | Public Health |
| Oct 11, 2011 | Robert F. Graboyes, Ph.D. | Health Care Law Subsidies: A Tale of Two Cities | The 2010 health care law will conjure up a strange brew of inequities as it comes to a boil in 2014. The mechanistic, one-size-fits-all health insurance subsidies, for example, will generate serious questions about the law’s fairness. | Costs & Economic Analysis | Health Reform |