Over the past decade, I’ve seen a number of studies asking people whom they trust among various health care stakeholders. Nurses, pharmacists, and doctors always come out at the top. Beyond that: Trust of hospitals tends to be high (60–80%) Trust of health plans is at the bottom of the heap (10–20%) Is this written in [...]
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One of the biggest concerns about ACOs has been their potential to enable market consolidation— that by uniting health care providers the ACO gains market clout and ability to charge higher prices. While this is a legitimate concern about ACOs, so far it’s not playing out. Why? Tags: ACO, antitrust
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On the Perficient Health IT blog, Christel Kellogg writes: I am hearing that carriers are staying away from ACOs and are not planning on partnering. What have you heard? This is one of those blip-on-the-radar-screen comments that jarred my attention — and it raises very important questions about industry dynamics. First, let me expand on the issue. [...]
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Last week I wrote about five key differences between formal ACOs (mainly care providers contracting with Medicare) and informal Accountable Care-Like (AC-Like) arrangements between care providers and commercial health plans. Transaction costs Timing Incrementalism Flexibility Capital cost There’s an important 6th difference worth noting: Visibility Formal ACOs will be visible from miles away — think elephants [...]
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A lot. AC-Like arrangements will be MUCH simpler to create and maintain. The health care market is moving toward accountable care. There are at least two broad paths forward: 1) Formal Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) by which care providers contract with Medicare 2) Informal Accountable Care-Like (AC-Like) arrangements between care providers and commercial health plans [...]
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Zeke Emanuel’s editorial in the New York Times — The End of Health Insurance Companies — really got my blood boiling. It’s irresponsible and naive. Former Obama advisor Emanuel “predicts”: By 2020, the American health insurance industry will be extinct. Insurance companies will be replaced by accountable care organizations — groups of doctors, hospitals and other health care providers [...]
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Resources are finite. They just are. This is not an opinion, it is a law of the universe. Yet, for my lifetime, I have been incredibly frustrated by medicine’s cultural and practical lack of acknowledgement of this law. FINALLY, the American College of Physicians (ACP) got it. Kaiser Health News describes the revelation: The American [...]
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The Care Continuum Alliance announces a timely new blog: Voice on Population Health. Tracey Moorhead, President and CEO of the Care Continuum Alliance, writes today’s inaugural post. She persuasively notes the increasing importance of the full continuum of population health interventions – wellness, prevention and other approaches to improving health, reducing disease risk and raising productivity. Bob [...]
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Check out the best of health care policy punditry on the Wright on Health blog. Brad Wright hosts the latest edition of the Health Wonk Review. No tag for this post.
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