January, 2011 - CT Health Policy

SustiNet final report off to General Assembly

By Ellen Andrews | January 10, 2011 |

The SustiNet task force has sent their recommendations to the legislature. Recomendations include payment and delivery system reforms, including patient centered medical homes, and taking advantage of a federal reform opportunity to extend Medicaid eligibility to twice the poverty level for adults – saving money for CT consumers and for the state. The plan includes…

January CT Health Policy web quiz – long term care

By Ellen Andrews | January 8, 2011 |

Test your knowledge of long term care costs in Connecticut. (Hint: they are very high). Take the January CT Health Policy Webquiz.

Geek alert: New report on geographic variation in Medicare spending

By Ellen Andrews | January 6, 2011 |

Huge variations in health care spending per person between different regions of the US have generated a lot of interest in the last year or two. The variations cannot be explained by the incidence of disease, demographics, or even prices. You won’t be surprised to hear that CT is a very expensive state. There is…

Serious quality of care questions in defibrillator implants

By Ellen Andrews | January 5, 2011 |

A new study on over 100,000 patients found that over one in five who received heart defibrillator implants shouldn’t have, based on best practice guidelines. The implants require surgery, with a risk of complications, and cost about $25,000 each. Not only was the surgery risky and expensive, but the 22% of patients who should not…

Online calculator outlines bottom line business case for quality

By Ellen Andrews | January 4, 2011 |

I’ve been playing with NCQA’s Quality Dividend Calculator – a cool toy that estimates how much improving health care quality can mean to a company’s bottom line. Visitors input some basic information about a company (I made mine up) such as number of employees, ages/gender, total revenues, overhead percentages, area of the US, industry, how…

New report confirms that uninsured are NOT the reason for ER overcrowding, Medicaid is

By Ellen Andrews | January 3, 2011 |

Six out of seven ER visits to CT hospitals did not require hospital admission between 2006 and 2009, according to a new report by the Office of Health Care Access. Almost half were for non-urgent problems. Uninsured patients accounted for only one in eight ER non-admit visits, virtually the same as their proportion in the…