Patients demand for on-demand care

As patients are becoming used to quicker turn-around times in other retail industries, expectations regarding health care waiting times are rising.  As PwC reports: Heightened desire for “on-demand” healthcare in the form of telemedicine, mobile health, social media and retail clinics has fueled the move toward healthcare anywhere, anytime. Nearly one in four consumers surveyed…

Do Surgeons Strategically Select Patients to Improve Scores on Health Care Quality Report Cards?

Do report cards improve quality or simply incentivize hospitals and physicians to stratetically choose which patients to treat? To answer this question, a paper by Chen and Meinecke (2012) examine coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) report cards introduced in Pennsylvania.  Report cards can improve quality but they can also induce selection behavior not only by…

Friday Links

We’re horrible at taking our medicine. Medicaid spending (yikes!) “few school districts have the luxury of firing low-performing teacher” Hospital rounds with an iPad. The growth in concierge medicine. Health Reform to create doctor shortage? English hip replacements are 2-4 times more deadly than European peers.

Iran: A model for Rural Health Care

Access to care for rural Americans can be difficult, even for individuals covered by Medicaid.  The New York Times examines whether Iran can serve as a model to serve rural Americans, such as those located in the Mississippi delta. The Iranians built “health houses” to minister to 1,500 people who lived within at most an…