Showing posts with label incentives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label incentives. Show all posts

Monday, October 14, 2013

Retrospective Study Finds Lack of Links Of Hospital CEO Pay to Patient Outcomes

Hospital CEO Pay Not Tied To Quality by David Pittman.  Medpage Today.  October 14, 2013.

(1)  Nonprofit hospital chief executive compensation was correlated only with ____________________.

(2)  In 2009 CEO compensation averaged ______________.

(3)  An author of the study stated that it is important to understand the factors that influence a CEO's compensation because ___________________.

(4)  There was _________ between adjusted mortality and CEO pay.

(5)  Among the possible unintended consequences of linking CEO compensation to quality metrics could be ___________________.

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Care And Insurance Seem To Align in End-Of-Life Dementia Care

Insurance Type To Dying Dementia Patients' Care by Andrew M. Seaman.  Reuters Health.  September 24, 2013.

(1)  Fee-for-service insurance payment, for every test and treatment, seemed to result in more moves to the _____________ for end-of-life dementia patient than when payment was on a _________ basis.

(2)  People with advanced dementia won't usually benefit from ______________ during the last months of life for ______________.

(3)  Nursing homes may have an incentive to send very sick people to the hospital because ________________________.

(4)  Managed care organizations receive a __________ for each person they cover.

(5)  The researcher indicated that "it turns out that (the patient) may not _________ even if you sent them to the hospital."

Friday, February 15, 2013

Georgia Firms Share Ways To Cut Health Costs

GA. Firms To Share Ideas On Cutting Health Costs by Andy Miller.  Georgia Health News.  February 13, 2013.

Employers are increasingly seeking to provide incentives for healthy employee behavior, share best practices with other Georgia firms, and forming cost effective relationships with healthcare providers.

Monday, January 28, 2013

Is P4P DOA?

Carrots For Doctors by Bill Keller.  Op-Ed Columnist.  The New York Times.  January 27, 2013.

Providing a critique and outline of the limitations of pay for performance (P4P) for doctors, Keller goes beyond criticism to delineate ideas that may work better.  Pay for performance, according to the piece, does not address the biggest cause of high cost of American health care as compared with other nations.    The reason other nations can devote less of their GDP to health care is that their system is single payer, providing bargaining power sufficient to require lower costs from suppliers.  However, single payer seems not to be politically feasible in the United States as Keller notes. Not rejecting financial incentives totally, he provides some  interesting ways to structure them so that they might work better than P4P.  One idea is to give hospitals performance bonuses at the beginning of the year with a refund required at year's end if performance goals are not met.  An interesting and insightful piece.

Monday, October 15, 2012

Patient Happiness Tied to Medicare Reimbursement

U.S. Ties Hospital Payments to Making Patients Happy by Janet Adams.  The Wall Street Journal.  October 14, 2012.

Over the next year $1 billion in government payments to hospitals will be based in part on patient satisfaction as determined by a 27-question government survey administered to patients.  This new emphasis on patient satisfaction tied to funding has had broad impact.  Some medical professionals view this approach as unfair with those at hospitals serving the poor are especially concerned.  Long waits in the emergency room may leave low-income patients grumpy and less likely to respond favorably to surveys.  The article focuses on the experience of Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, GA as it seeks to adapt to those incentives.  Sometimes surprising discoveries and relationships were uncovered.  For example, when ESPN was added to the television offerings to increase satisfaction, it was also discovered that pain medication requests declined during afternoon football games.