Quality & Safety
The U.S. spends more money on medical care than any other industrialized country, but faces an epidemic of sub-standard care with an estimated 98,000 hospital deaths annually from preventable errors.
From Rx for Reform
NCHC Action Fund President and CEO, Ralph G. Neas, calls for an insurance policy for health care reform.
Noting that last spring, leaders of the health care industry, including representatives from PhARMA, America's Health Insurance Plans, the American Medical Association and American Hospital Association, met with President Obama and pledged to him and the American people that they would decrease the annual rate of cost increases by 1.5 percentage points to save $2 trillion or more over the next decade. Neas said the commitment that industry leaders made to the President and the American public "should be more than a photo op, press statement and promise." Citing Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus' piece about legislative cost containment efforts and needing a fail-safe mechanism to ensure that the rate of health care inflation is slowed, Neas urged that industry pledges to the President and the American people to control the growth of national health expenditures be codified and made enforceable as part of health reform.
The National Coalition on Health Care's recommendations, based upon the consensus view of 85 member organizations, to make the system less complex, reduce overly high prices, and create a truly competitive health care marketplace. The goal of the paper is to augment the NCHC Principles and Specifications with a more detailed and selective set of policy recommendations on cost containment and quality improvement.
From Facts & Research
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has released new state health data on its “State Snapshot” website. This site includes a wealth of information related to state health quality, as compared to national quality benchmarks.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires that drug manufacturers report to Congress the annual number of free prescription drug samples they give to each practitioner. Currently, little is known about the impact that drug samples have on physicians' prescribing habits, or on drug costs. This data will be a step toward learning more about the true impact of the practice.
While insurance market reforms required by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) get top billing, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reports that the nation’s network of Community Health Centers (CHC) will be a critical element in fulfilling reform’s promise. Today more than 8,000 CHC’s are the source of primary health services for over 20 million people and are expected to reduce reliance on emergency rooms and providers that do not welcome Medicaid patients. Congress authorized more than $11 billion in funding to support 15,000 new centers expected to provide services for over 20 million new people starting in 2011.
Almost half of all uninsured young adults with a chronic condition reported that their condition worsened during the previous 12 months due to lack of care.
National Coalition on Health Care
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