Publications

The growing number of consumers using less traditional methods for accessing their health care is prompting many hospital systems to explore expanding their walk-in clinics and online access. Additionally, many hospital systems are exploring new ways to provide less expensive but still high quality care and are making investments in new ways to measure patient outcomes. A recent article in The New York Times highlights how the Cleveland Clinic is responding to these changes.

To make smart choices about their health care, individuals need accurate and timely information about quality and price. States have broad responsibilities for the regulation of health insurance and the provision of medical care and are also major purchasers of health care for their employees. Thus, states have important roles in fostering price transparency.

Increasingly, health plans, employers, and other payers are developing tiered provider networks, which rank and stratify providers according to cost and quality performance. In a HCFO-funded study, Meredith Rosenthal, Ph.D., and Anna Sinaiko, Ph.D., from the Harvard School of Public Health examined the effect of a three-tiered network on patients’ choice of physician or health plan.

As Americans shoulder more health care costs, Public Agenda research suggests that many are hungry for more and better price information. However, some obstacles remain to increasing the number of Americans who compare prices before getting care.

Increasingly, policymakers and health services researchers are interested in measuring prices of health care services and understanding how the price of services varies as a function of quality, market structure, managed care penetration, public payer prices, and other factors. Before any conclusions can be reached about determinants of price, price measures must be constructed and their construct validity assessed.

A recent article in USA Today explores potential reasons for price variation across geographic locations and highlights how consumers can use this information to make better decisions about their health care. Price transparency will be the focus of an upcoming summit sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, March 16-18, in Washington, DC.

Palliative care is typically associated with services provided to terminally ill cancer patients. Increasingly, however, palliative care is considered a treatment option for other life-limiting illnesses and for easing chronic pain.

In 2012, the ABIM Foundation announced the Choosing Wisely initiative under which more than 60 specialty societies have developed lists of five evidence-based recommendations of tests and treatments that physicians and patients should question and discuss. In a HCFO-funded study, Carrie Colla, Ph.D., and colleagues created claims-based algorithms to examine 11 services identified on one or more Choosing Wisely lists.

A recent Health Affairs Blog post explored the dramatic increase in the percent of commercial sector payments tied to value. Recent and ongoing HCFO-funded work provides insights into the challenges and opportunities of these value-based payment arrangements.