Posts by Ellen Andrews
Consider an internship at the CT Health Policy Project
Are you interested in making a difference for CT consumers struggling to get the health care they need? To help policymakers find solutions for complex and costly health system problems? Working with experienced professional staff and other interns from diverse fields and perspectives? Consider an internship with the CT Health Policy Project. For almost a…
Read MoreThe mortgage crisis and medical debt
I was floored when I picked up the paper the other day and read that the Federal Reserve is bailing out Bear Stearns, the fifth largest investment bank in the nation. Until the moment it teetered on the brink of failure, Bear Stearns asserted that it had avoided crisis. I wasn’t upset because of the…
Read MoreCharter Oak update
HB-5617 – the “Charter Oak fix bill – passed the Human Services Committee yesterday with substitute language along party lines. The bill that passed includes mental health parity for the program, eliminates the requirement that enrollees be uninsured for six months to be eligible, reports on services delivered and the costs of care, Charter Oak…
Read MoreWomen’s basketball injuries similar to men’s
An article in this month’s issue of Connecticut Medicine finds that despite differences from the men’s game, women basketball players suffer similar injuries at similar rates at both the high school and college levels. ACL injuries are the exception – women are two to four times more likely to suffer these tears most commonly resulting…
Read MoreOffice of Health Care Advocate saved over $4 million for CT consumers in 2007
For every dollar spent on the Office of Health Care Advocate (OHA), $4.42 was returned to CT consumers in health care services last year, according to OHA’s most recent annual report. From 2001 to 2007, OHA helped consumers with almost 10,000 complaints. Additionally, OHA was able to get two pieces of consumer protection legislation passed…
Read MoreCourant column highlights UConn nursing program troubles
Too many graduates of UConn’s School of Nursing are not passing the national nursing exam according to Kevin Rennie’s column in today’s Hartford Courant. Apparently the poor performance is not new this year, but is unique to UConn. Nursing graduates of Quinnipiac University, Western CT State University and St. Joseph’s College are easily passing benchmarks.…
Read MoreHuman Services Committee passes bill delaying HUSKY HMO contracting and delinking from Charter Oak
Today the Human Services Committee passed a stripped down version of HB-5618, An Act Concerning Revisions to the HUSKY Plan. The new language would delay HUSKY contracting with HMOs until July 1, 2009, delink procurement of HUSKY from the Charter Oak Plan, and provide for a study of recent changes to HUSKY including implementation of…
Read MoreStocks up, but health insurers down
While the stock market yesterday enjoyed its biggest gain in five years, based on relief from the Federal Reserve, health insurers’ stocks dropped after Wellpoint warned that the company expects less profit than originally anticipated for the first quarter and all through 2008. After the announcement, Wellpoint shares dropped by more than 28%. The company…
Read MoreHealth care disparities more about where care is delivered
The latest issue of Health Affairs focusing on Disparities: Expanding the Focus includes almost two dozen articles on the subject. Two that stand out examine racial and ethnic disparities in the quality of hospital care. The first, D. Gaskin, et. al., Do Hospitals Provide Lower Quality Care to Minorities than to Whites? studied outcomes of…
Read MoreDonaghue Foundation Annual Conference
Beyond Eureka!, the Donaghue Foundation’s annual meeting/conference on translating health care research into practice, will be Wednesday April 23rd at the Hilton in Hartford from 8:30am to 3pm. Atul Gawande, author of two bestsellers and a MacArthur Genius Fellow, will give the keynote address. Other speakers include Harlan Krumholz of D2B: An Alliance for Quality,…
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