Health Care Reform


Book Description

"A graphic explanation of the PPACA act"--Provided by publisher.




Healthcare Reform, Quality and Safety


Book Description

This book offers a global perspective on healthcare reform and its relationship with efforts to improve quality and safety. It looks at the ways reforms have developed in 30 countries, and specifically the impact national reform initiatives have had on the quality and safety of care. It explores how reforms drive quality and safety improvement, and equally how they act to negate such goals. Every country included in this book is involved in a reform and improvement process, but each takes place in a particular social, cultural, economic and developmental context, leading to differing emphases and varied progress. Methods for tackling common problems - financing, efficiencies, effectiveness, evidence-based practice, institutional reforms, quality improvement, and patient safety initiatives - also differ. Representatives from each nation provide a chapter to convey their own situation. The editors draw a conclusion from these numerous contributions and synthesize the themes emerging into a coherent ‘lessons learned’ summary that delivers value to the numerous stakeholders. Healthcare Reform, Quality and Safety forms a compendium of the current ‘state of the art’ in global healthcare reform. This is the first book of its type, and offers a unique opportunity for cross-fertilization of ideas to the mutual benefit of countries involved in the project. The content will be of interest to governments, policymakers, managers and leaders, clinicians, teaching academics, researchers and students.




Reforming Healthcare


Book Description

Wake up America! Have you given any thought to who will be providing your healthcare services in the next decade? Any healthcare delivery system, whether it is a National Health Service, an HMO, or a private delivery system, can offer healthcare services, but only a physician can provide those services. Will replacing the private healthcare delivery system with a National Health Service or with an HMO delivery system attract the best from among our youth into healthcare to become the providers of the public's healthcare services? Over the past three decades, neither Medicare nor the HMO industry have been provider friendly. This book discusses the importance of a private healthcare delivery system to the future quality and availability of the public's healthcare services. Furthermore, it discusses the existing private delivery system's problems and how easily those problems can be corrected by six changes to regulate a private delivery system. Three addenda are discussed: 1. Healthcare price controls. 2. Healthcare is not a business. 3. The HMO: Patients Beware.




Reforming Healthcare


Book Description

NHS reform continues to be a topical yet contentious issue in the UK. Reforming healthcare: What's the evidence? is the first major critical overview of the research published on healthcare reform in England from 1990 onwards by a team of leading UK health policy academics. It explores work considering the Conservative internal market of the 1990s and New Labour's healthcare reorganizations, including its attempts at performance management and the reintroduction of market-based reform from 2004 to 2010. It then considers the implications of this research for current debates about healthcare reorganization in England, and internationally. As the most up-to-date summary of what research says works in English healthcare reform, this essential review is aimed at anyone interested in the wide-ranging debates about health reorganization, but especially students and academics interested in social policy, public management and health policy.




Health-Care Utilization as a Proxy in Disability Determination


Book Description

The Social Security Administration (SSA) administers two programs that provide benefits based on disability: the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program and the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. This report analyzes health care utilizations as they relate to impairment severity and SSA's definition of disability. Health Care Utilization as a Proxy in Disability Determination identifies types of utilizations that might be good proxies for "listing-level" severity; that is, what represents an impairment, or combination of impairments, that are severe enough to prevent a person from doing any gainful activity, regardless of age, education, or work experience.




The Challenge to Change


Book Description

There is constant pressure on hospitals to improve health care delivery and increase cost effectiveness. New initiatives are the order of the day in the dramatically different health care systems of the United States and Great Britain. Often, as we know all too well, these efforts are not successful. In The Challenge to Change, Rebecca Kolins Givan analyzes the successes and failures of efforts to improve hospitals and explains what factors make it likely that the implementation of reforms will rewarded by positive transformation in a particular institution’s day-to-day operation. Givan’s in-depth qualitative case studies of both top-down initiatives and changes first suggested by staff on the front lines of care point clearly to the importance of all hospital workers in effecting change and even influencing national policy. Givan illuminates the critical role of workers, managers, and unions in enabling or constraining changes in policies and procedures and ensuring their implementation. Givan spotlights an Anglo-American model of hospital care and work organization, even while these countries retain their differences in access and payment. Entrenched professional roles, hierarchical workplace organization, and the sometimes-detached view of policymakers all shape the prospects for change in hospitals. Givan provides important examples of how the dedication and imagination of the people who work in hospitals can make all the difference when it comes to providing quality health care even in a challenging economic environment.




Evidence-Based Medicine and the Changing Nature of Health Care


Book Description

Drawing on the work of the Roundtable on Evidence-Based Medicine, the 2007 IOM Annual Meeting assessed some of the rapidly occurring changes in health care related to new diagnostic and treatment tools, emerging genetic insights, the developments in information technology, and healthcare costs, and discussed the need for a stronger focus on evidence to ensure that the promise of scientific discovery and technological innovation is efficiently captured to provide the right care for the right patient at the right time. As new discoveries continue to expand the universe of medical interventions, treatments, and methods of care, the need for a more systematic approach to evidence development and application becomes increasingly critical. Without better information about the effectiveness of different treatment options, the resulting uncertainty can lead to the delivery of services that may be unnecessary, unproven, or even harmful. Improving the evidence-base for medicine holds great potential to increase the quality and efficiency of medical care. The Annual Meeting, held on October 8, 2007, brought together many of the nation's leading authorities on various aspects of the issues - both challenges and opportunities - to present their perspectives and engage in discussion with the IOM membership.




Health Care Will Not Reform Itself


Book Description

Health care reform is within our reach. According to George Halvorson, CEO of the nation's largest private health care plan, only by improving the intent, quality, and reach of services will we achieve a health system that is economically feasible into the future. This year, Americans will spend 2.5 trillion for health services that are poorly coordinated, inconsistent, and most typically focused on the belated care of chronic conditions. What we have to show for that expenditure is a nation that continues to become more obese, less healthy, and more depressed. In Health Care Will Not Reform Itself, Kaiser Permanente CEO George Halvorson proves beyond a doubt that the tragically inconsistent care that currently defines the state of U.S. health services is irresponsible, irrational, but more importantly, fixable. With detail that might shock you, he shows why the nonsystem we now use is failing. Then, applying the same sensible leadership that makes Kaiser the most progressive health care organization in the world, he answers President Obama’s mandate for reform with a profound incentive-based, system-supported, goal-focused, care-improvement plan. Halvorson draws from respected studies, including his own, and the examples of successful systems across the world to show that while good health care is expensive, it is nowhere near as costly as bad health care. To immediately curb care costs and bring us in line with President Obama's projected parameters, he recommends that we: Take a preventive approach to the chronic conditions that account for the lion’s share of medical costs Coordinate patient care through a full commitment to information technology Increase the pool of contributors by mandating universal insurance Rearrange priorities by making health maintenance profitable Convene a national committee to "figure out the right thing" and "make it easy to do" While this book offers sage advice to policy makers, it is also written to educate the 260 million stakeholders and invite their participation in the debate that is now shaping. What makes this plan so easy to understand and so compelling is that it never strays from a profound truth: that the best health system is one that actually focuses on good health for everyone. All royalties from the sale of this book go to Oakland Community Voices: Healthcare for the Underserved




Reforming Healthcare


Book Description

Reforming Healthcare: How to Fix the System without the Destruction of the American Way is just that, an in depth examination of health care in the United States and around the world. It proposes an entirely new system of health care to be implemented in the United States.




Intelligent Kindness


Book Description

This book calls on policymakers, managers, educators and clinical staff to apply and nurture intelligent kindness in the organisation and delivery of care.