Health Reform - How Can Employers Help Fix Health Care?

In today's Wall Street Journal, Clayton Christensen and Jason Hwang, co-authors of "The Innovator's Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for Health Care" discuss how they think company CEOs can help change health care. They offer three specific strategies:

We recommend executives make one or more of three innovative changes: 1) encourage employees to use nurse-staffed in-store health clinics for common ailments, 2) partner with integrated health systems like Kaiser Permanente, and 3) set up company-run clinics at corporate offices and plants.

The article can be found here.

Health Care Reform - How to Finance It?

The Kaiser Family Foundation's Health Reform Gateway has released an issue brief on the options available to finance health care reform.

From KFF:

One of the key challenges in enacting a health care reform plan is how to finance it among government, employers, and individuals. Of particular concern to policymakers is what effect a health reform plan would have on government spending and the federal budget. President Obama and Congressional leaders have said that any health reform plan should not add to the budget deficit over a 10 year period.

This brief explains the likely sources of added costs under reform, the types of financing measures being considered, and some of the key questions likely to be addressed by how a plan is financed. It is part of a series of briefs providing an overview of key issues and concepts related to health reform.

The brief can be found here.

Goodbye to ERISA?

In Monday's Wall Street Journal, an opinion article on the Tri-Committee House health reform bill discusses the possible fate of ERISA pre-emption for employer-based health benefits.

Check out the article here.

Kaiser Poll Finds Majority of Public Support Health Reform

July's Kaiser Health Tracking Poll finds that the majority of the public support reforming America's health care system, although it is softening.

The Kaiser Family Foundation's (KFF) press release reads that:

As has been the case over the past ten months, a majority of the American people (56%) continue to believe that health reform is more important than ever despite the country's economic problems, and the public believes by a two to one margin (51% versus 23%) that the country will be better rather than worse off if Congress and the president enact health reform. More Americans think they and their family will be better off (39%) than worse off (21%) if legislation passes, with roughly a third (32%) believing it will make no difference for them or their family.

The complete poll, with charts and other analyses, can be found on the KFF site.

Consumer Checkbook Releases Report of Patients' Experiences with Doctors

Washington, D.C.-based Consumer Checkbook/Center for the Study of Services, a non-profit consumer organization, today released ratings and reports on hundreds of individual doctors in Memphis, TN; Denver, CO; and Kansas City, MO. Major national health plans Aetna, Cigna, and UnitedHealthcare participated along with regional health plan leaders Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City as well as BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee.

The reports on doctors are available free to the public at a CHECKBOOK website (www.checkbook.org/patientcentral) and also through the website of a healthcare coalition in each metro area—the Kansas City Quality Improvement Consortium, the Colorado Business Group on Health, and (in the near future) Healthy Memphis Common Table.

A Public Plan for Connecticut

As reported by the Hartford Courant, yesterday the Democrat-controlled Connecticut state legislature overturned seven vetoes by Connecticut Governor M. Jodi Rell to take the first step in establishing universal health care in the state. Vetoing what she saw as a program too costly (claiming that costs could run as high as $1 billion a year), Gov. Rell did win a smaller victory when the controversial health care "pooling" bill failed to pass in the state Senate. The universal health care program is set to launch in 2012 and details of it will be crafted by a state board.

The story from the Hartford Courant can be found here. And, the story from the WSJ can be found here.

Accredited Office-Based Surgery Practices in New York State

The New York State Department of Health (NYS DOH) has launched a web portal that lists, by county, accredited office-based surgery practices. According to the NYS DOH website:

"Effective July 14, 2009, physician offices that perform surgical or invasive procedures using more than mild sedation must be accredited by one of these agencies:

• Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care (AAAHC)
• American Association for Accreditation of Ambulatory Surgery Facilities, Inc. (AAAASF)
• The Joint Commission (TJC) "
  

The website can be found here.