healthcare costs
CT health systems ranked poorly by their nurses
Connecticut health systems underperform in an analysis of nurses’ satisfaction with their employers by MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Only four health systems covering Connecticut had enough data to be included in the study – Hartford Healthcare, Yale-New Haven Health, Trinity, and the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Nurses working at Yale-New Haven and…
Read MoreICER fair access report finds improvements but problems with transparency
ICER’s third annual Barriers to Fair Access report found that most prescription drug coverage policies met fair rules for patient access. This is an improvement over previous years suggesting that transparency and public sunlight works. But the report also found that policies needed more transparency and are too complex. Policies on which patients are eligible…
Read MoreBook Club: We’ve Got You Covered
I wasn’t looking forward to reading yet another book promoting yet another idea to solve America’s broken healthcare system. But it’s my job, so I dove into We’ve Got You Covered: Rebooting American Health Care by Liran Einav and Amy Finkelstin. I’m a convert now – mostly. The first half of the book is the…
Read MoreOp-Ed: The Charts That Scare Health Insurance Watchdogs
Self-insured small group plans sound innocuous but they’re not – and they are growing quickly. The plans save money for some small businesses, but they have serious risks. It’s kind of complicated but stay with me. I’ll walk you through it; there will be no numbers. Read more
Read MoreCT commercial insurance enrollment down 5%; several possible explanations
Download the report Last year, total enrollment in Connecticut’s commercial managed care plans was 1,666,972. That was down by 85,019 from 2021 at 1,750,904, according to the this year’s Consumer Report Card from the CT Insurance Department. The drop in enrollment was almost entirely from large group plans with over 50 members and spread across…
Read MoreCT Medicaid primary care redesign: Payment reform
Download the full report with sources Connecticut Medicaid is considering reforms to primary care delivery and payment. The CT Health Policy Project is collecting evidence from other states and programs to help inform that planning. Part 1 focused on Connecting with community services to improve health. A major part of DSS’s planning for reform is…
Read MoreAnalysis: Private Equity’s CT Hospital Mess Comes As No Surprise
Yale-New Haven’s plan to buy three hospitals owned by Prospect Medical Holdings, a troubled private equity group, is reportedly on the rocks. Read more from CT News Junkie
Read MoreCT primary care redesign: What the evidence says
Early in 2023, Connecticut’s Department of Social Services (DSS) embarked on an ambitious planning process to make significant changes to primary care delivery and payment in our state’s Medicaid program. DSS’s planning committee meeting materials and recordings are available here. In Connecticut, there have been differing perspectives about the status of primary care, Medicaid and…
Read MoreCT Healthcare Explained — what’s next?
Hopefully, you’ve found our short Sunday Health Policy Minute emails informative and helpful. This is just the beginning of CT Healthcare Explained’s efforts to help make sense of our state’s unreasonably complex system. Hopefully, you’ve accessed the site resources including explainer videos, Basics, and Deeper Dives on the current seventeen topics. Consumers, policymakers, clinicians, students,…
Read MoreHealthcare access for CT residents with developmental disabilities Speaker Series
About 45,000 Connecticut residents have a developmental disability. Compared to Americans without disabilities, adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities are five times more likely to be in poor health, half as likely to get a check-up, have lower rates of blood pressure checks, flu shots, oral health care, and screens for cancer, cholesterol, vision, or…
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