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Biomedical subjects

Robert A Berenson

Publications and source records attributed to Robert A Berenson.

16 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Hospital-physicians relations: cooperation, competition, or separation?

Because many services performed in hospitals can safely and conveniently be performed in ambulatory settings, physicians have become owners of entities directly competing with hospitals for patients in a new medical arms race. Hospitals and medical staff physicians face growing tensions as a result of physicians' growing reluctance to take emergency department call and the consequences of hospitalists replacing physicians in the care of inpatients. Although there are increasing expectations that health system challenges will lead hospitals and physicians to collaborate, in many markets the willingness and ability for hospitals and physicians to work together is actually eroding.

Ambulatory Care Facilities↗
PubMed2006

Specialty-service lines: salvos in the new medical arms race.

Hospitals and physicians are developing and marketing discrete and profitable specialty-service lines. Although closely affiliated specialist physicians are central to hospitals' service-line products, other physicians compete directly with hospitals via physician-owned specialty facilities. Specialty-service lines may be provided in a variety of settings, both inside and outside traditional hospital walls. Thus far, the escalating battle between hospitals and physicians for control over specialty services has not affected hospital profitability. However, as the scope of care that can be safely performed in the outpatient arena expands, physician competition for control over specialty services may threaten hospitals' financial health.

Economic Competition↗
PubMed2006

Do specialty hospitals promote price competition?

Policy makers continue to debate the correct public policy toward physician-owned heart, orthopedic and surgical specialty hospitals. Do specialty hospitals offer desirable competition for general hospitals and foster improved quality, efficiency and service? Or do specialty hospitals add unneeded capacity and increased costs while threatening the ability of general hospitals to deliver community benefits? In three Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC) sites with significant specialty hospital development--Indianapolis, Little Rock and Phoenix--recent site visits found that purchasers generally believe specialty hospitals are contributing to a medical arms race that is driving up costs without demonstrating clear quality advantages.

Arizona↗
PubMed2005

Rising pressure: hospital emergency departments as barometers of the health care system.

Pressures--ranging from persuading specialists to provide on-call coverage to dealing with growing numbers of patients with serious mental illness--are building in already-crowded hospital emergency departments (EDs) across the country, according to findings from the Center for Studying Health System Change's (HSC) 2005 site visits to 12 nationally representative communities. As the number of ED visits rises significantly faster than population growth, many hospitals are expanding emergency department capacity. At the same time, hospitals face an ongoing nursing shortage, contributing to tight inpatient capacity that in turn hinders admitting ED patients. In their role as hospitals' "front door" for attracting insured inpatient admissions, emergency departments also increasingly are expected to help hospitals compete for insured patients while still meeting obligations to provide emergency care to all-comers under federal law. Failure to address these growing pressures may compromise access to emergency care for patients and spur already rapidly rising health care costs.

Delivery of Health Care↗
PubMed2005

Can money buy quality? Physician response to pay for performance.

While pay for performance (P4P) has created a nationwide buzz among health plans, physicians and hospitals, most P4P initiatives are still on the drawing board, according to findings from the Center for Studying Health System Change's (HSC) 2005 site visits to 12 nationally representative communities. HSC focused on performance-based payment for physicians, finding that only two HSC communities-Orange County, Calif., and Boston-have significant physician P4P programs. In the other 10 communities, where almost no physicians have received quality-related payments to date, physician attitudes about P4P ranged from skeptical to hostile. P4P, a concept best suited to larger physician groups, may be difficult to implement in markets dominated by small physician practices. In spite of substantial barriers to initiating performance-related payment for physicians, most large health plans and Medicare are planning P4P programs.

Boston↗
PubMed2004

Lost in transition: challenges and opportunities for improving the quality of transitional care.

Transitional care has been defined as a set of actions designed to ensure the coordination and continuity of health care as patients transfer between different locations or different levels of care in the same location. Transitional care, which primarily concerns the relatively brief time interval that begins with preparing a patient to leave one setting and concludes when the patient is received in the next setting, poses challenges that distinguish it from other types of care. Many transitions are unplanned, result from unanticipated medical problems, occur in "real time" during nights and on weekends, involve clinicians who may not have an ongoing relationship with the patient, and happen so quickly that formal and informal support mechanisms cannot respond in a timely manner. This article describes the challenges involved in and potential solutions for improving the quality of transitional care.

Continuity of Patient Care↗
PubMed2004

Lumpers and splitters: different approaches to understanding variations research.

The latest work of John Wennberg and colleagues represents an important advance over earlier work by targeting different domains of clinical care at a more specific level. The findings have clear implications for those interested in constraining Medicare costs and may even point a way forward for lasting reform of purchasing practices in both the public and the private sectors. Nonetheless, the latest findings and proposals leave unresolved important research and policy questions, including those involving the basic relationship between spending and outcomes and payment reforms that would promote care of more uniform quality.

Health Care Reform↗
PubMed2003

Medical malpractice liability crisis meets markets: stress in unexpected places.

While the causes of rapidly rising medical malpractice insurance premiums remain contentious and unsettled, the consequences are rippling through communities, threatening to diminish patients' access to care and increase health care costs, with an uncertain impact on quality, according to findings from the Center for Studying Health System Change's (HSC) 2002-03 site visits to 12 nationally representative communities. The severity of malpractice insurance problems varied across communities, with some physicians changing how and where they care for patients. For example, rather than treat patients in their offices, more physicians are referring patients to emergency departments. And many physicians, especially those practicing in high-risk specialties, are unwilling to provide emergency department on-call coverage because of malpractice liability concerns.

Emergency Service, Hospital↗
PubMed2001

Medicare+Choice: doubling or disappearing?

Although the changes in the program created by the Balanced Budget Act are often viewed as the reason for the current instability in the Medicare+Choice (M+C) program, in fact, health plans are having difficulties in all of their markets, not just in Medicare. It may be time to reconsider the purpose of the program and to fundamentally redesign how payments are made to managed care organizations contracting with Medicare. Two alternative approaches are suggested: treating M+C like another provider type by severing the payment linkage to spending under traditional Medicare, and overhauling the program by creating a value-based purchasing orientation rewarding plans that provide higher-quality care to beneficiaries with chronic diseases.

Aged↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Are market forces strong enough to deliver efficient health care systems? Confidence is waning.

Our paper draws lessons for policymakers from twelve communities as we identify the power and limits of general market-based strategies for improving the efficiency of health systems. The vision of market forces driving our system toward efficiency attracted politicians, policy analysts, and practitioners in the 1990s. Today some policy advocates profess even more faith in unfettered market forces. Market participants in the twelve communities in the Community Tracking Study, however, have become doubtful, and our analysis confirms the logic of their pessimism. Major barriers to efficient market outcomes exist amid growing willingness to consider renewed government interventions.

Delivery of Health Care↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Which way for competition? None of the above.

Despite growing documentation that the conditions needed to support competition in health care do not exist, consumer-directed health care has been offered as the new market-based solution to cost inflation. Yet typical consumer-based insurance products undermine the very logic of expecting consumers to make good health care decisions by making preventive services--the category of services about which consumers are best able to make informed decisions using their own money--exempt from cost sharing. Consumer-directed care threatens important societal values--in particular, the goal of establishing relationships between patients and clinical professionals based on trust.

Community Participation↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Confronting the barriers to chronic care management in Medicare.

This paper examines the ability of the current Medicare program--both traditional fee-for-service and risk-based contracting--to address the needs of beneficiaries with chronic conditions, who represent almost 80 percent of program enrollment. Grounded in indemnity insurance principles, including concerns about "moral hazard," the traditional Medicare program faces difficulty evolving to support of a chronic care model of health care practice. Although capitation may be the most desirable platform to support provision of care to beneficiaries with chronic conditions, the current structural limitations and problems faced in the Medicare+Choice program limit capitation's use at this time.

Aged↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Medicare payment policy: does cost shifting matter?

We examine cost shifting within the context of Medicare payment policy. We briefly review economic theory and available data and discuss the importance of cost shifting for policy. Then we present four central findings on cost shifting based on the views of former high-level policymakers. First, Medicare's early (pre-prospective) payment policy was a boon to hospitals. Second, Medicare payment policy is a "top-down" affair, driven by budgetary and special-interest politics. Third, federal policymakers may not consciously consider cost shifting, but state policymakers do. Fourth, Medicare payment policy requires constant adjustment, but we are "getting it right" most of the time.

Budgets↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Getting serious about excessive Medicare spending: a purchasing model.

It is now well documented that Medicare spending varies widely across the country and that higher spending does not produce differences in quality, access, or even patient satisfaction. Yet for various reasons, policy analysts have tended to minimize the importance of the fact that as much as 30 percent of Medicare spending might be excessive and unnecessary. There is an imperative to transform the traditional Medicare program from that of a claims payer to that of a strategic purchaser, able to adopt a broad array of approaches and to use a comprehensive set of tools used by private plans, but in a more transparent and accountable way.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, U.S.↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Medicare disadvantaged and the search for the elusive 'level playing field'.

The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act (MMA) raised payment levels for established Medicare Advantage (private) local plans and would-be regional preferred provider organizations (PPOs). Even though plans on average receive about 108 percent of what would have been spent for the same beneficiaries in traditional Medicare, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) added another 2.3 percent in 2004 and 4.0 percent in 2005 in its implementation of risk-adjusted payments. Although MMA gives a clear preference to private plans to start a fundamental restructuring of Medicare, the question remains whether Congress will maintain overpayments to private plans when faced with the pressure to reduce budget deficits.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, U.S.↗