Posts by Ellen Andrews
Donaghue Foundation Annual Meeting & Conference
Wednesday, I went to the Donaghue Foundation Annual Meeting and Conference. The Donaghue Foundation was established to “promote medical knowledge which will be of practical benefit to the preservation, maintenance and improvement of human life.” Three very different projects were highlighted. The first panelist, Harlan Krumholz, MD (Yale School of Medicine) presented on a project…
Read MoreNew report details questions and answers on implementing medical interpretation for CT Medicaid consumers
A new report, Medicaid Payments for Medical Interpreters: Implementation Questions and Recommended Action, commissioned by the CT Health Foundation lays out details the state needs to consider in implementing legislation passed last year providing medical interpretation services to Medicaid consumers. Questions addressed include how much should DSS pay and to whom, in what situations will…
Read MoreLife expectancy drops for women in 183 US counties
From 1983 to 1999 life expectancy in many US counties decreased, especially for women (183 counties) while life expectancy for all Americans grew by 7 years for men and 6 years for women from 1960 to 2000. The last time US life expectancy experienced any decline was in the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic. The authors…
Read MoreRetail medical clinic issue brief
Connecticut now has at least fifteen retail medical clinics, mainly Minute Clinics in CVS stores, but more are coming. Go to our Policymaker Issue Brief No. 44 for more on what these clinics are, their potential as an affordable source of care, concerns about safety and impact on the rest of the health care system,…
Read MoreCA to review thousands of insurance policy cancellations after consumers get sick, New CT law prohibits this practice
The LA Times reports that the CA Dept. of Managed Health Care will be reviewing thousands of cancelled individual policies looking for cases where coverage was cancelled after patients have become ill, despite paying premiums for years. The insurers cancel policies citing errors by consumers on insurance applications, often completed years earlier and often honest…
Read MoreDesperate Measures
Yesterday, I was catching up with a friend of mine who lives in Memphis when she told me about the beginning of her week: On Sunday, my friend, Meredith, went to introduce her newborn daughter to some friends who run a gym. She ran in for five minutes and, by the time she returned to…
Read MoreYale School of Nursing Bellos Lecture — A fresh view of racial and ethnic disparities
This year’s Sybil Bellos Lecture at the Yale School of Nursing, given today by Harvard’s David Williams, PhD, MPH, focused on racial and ethnic disparities as a social construct. His talk titled “Social Sources of Disparities: Patterns, Causes and Interventions” compiled a wealth of research from disparate sources providing a different interpretation of the issue.…
Read More“Sick Around the World” airs tonight
Tonight’s episode of Frontline, Sick Around the World, compares the universal health care systems of five capitalist countries – Germany, Japan, Taiwan, Switzerland and the UK – looking for ideas that could work in the US. Japanese consumers go to the doctor 3 times as often as we do, get more than twice as many…
Read MoreCommunity Catalyst at the HealthFirst Authority
Friday, Michael Miller of Massachusetts-based Community Catalyst presented to the Cost, Cost Containment & Finance Working Group of the HealthFirst Authority. His presentation focused on “cost containment strategies in other states.” He opened with, “Cost containment is not a useful framework.” He went on to say that if we were spending more than other countries…
Read MoreThree Charter Oak/HUSKY bids are in, Congressional investigation of United
Today DSS released the names of the managed care organizations (MCOs) that submitted bids for the HUSKY and Charter Oak plans to begin July 1st. They are Community Health Network, which currently participates in HUSKY, and two new MCOs – Aetna Better Health, a subsidiary of Schaller Anderson and Aetna, and AmeriChoice, a subsidiary of…
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