Care Delivery

Soon patients may have no excuse to miss a doctor appointment. MedStar Health, which serves Maryland and Washington, D.C., recently teamed up with Uber, the ride service, to provide patients with a reliable option to get to and from their medical appointments safely.
Trustee Talking PointsMisuse of prescription opioids is reaching crisis proportions in the United States, with an estimated 44 people dying every day from an overdose of such painkillers.The problem cuts across demographic and geographic categories, enveloping the young, the old, the rich, the poor…
Trustee Talking Points Trustee Talking Points Performance data give Medicare and other payers the ability to measure the value of health services. Value-based competition will thoroughly disrupt health care markets and will favor innovative players. Providers will need to reconsider what…
Trustee Talking Points Trustee Talking Points Hospital leaders — executives and trustees — must pay attention to how facilities affect infection control and patient safety. Medicare and insurers are tying reimbursement to measures on health care-associated…
Health care organizations live or die based on the quality of the data their leaders use to make strategic, business and clinical decisions. And that data — from hospital-acquired infection rates and patient satisfaction scores, to Medicare reimbursement levels — come from dozens of disparate…
Trustee Talking Points Trustee Talking Points Cost is driving a rise in ambulatory care and a proliferation of outpatient settings. Technology enables these facilities to deliver care across multiple settings. Roughly eight models of ambulatory sites have emerged. Differences between these…
Infant mortality hits record low The U.S. mortality rate fell 2.3% in 2014, to a record low 582.1 deaths per 100,000 live births. The drop was led by a 13.5% decline in deaths from respiratory illness.
Last year marked the 50th anniversary of Medicare and Medicaid. These two programs (including state funding) represent 37 cents of every dollar spent on health care in the United States. There are more than 54 million Medicare beneficiaries and 64 million Americans on Medicaid. As one of the…