A distributed health data network is a system that allows secure remote analysis of separate data sets, each comprising a different medical organization's or health plan's records. Distributed health data networks are currently being planned that could cover millions of people, permitting studies of comparative clinical effectiveness, best practices, diffusion of medical technologies, and quali...

Introduction Health and health care development has not been a priority of the Indian state. This is reflected in two significant facts. One, the low level of investment and allocation of resources to the health sector over the years – about one percent of GDP with clear declining trends over the last decade. And second the uncontrolled and very rapid development of an unregulated private healt...

An analysis of changes in company health plans between 1979 and 1984 shows that employers often sought to contain rising expenditures, in some cases, increasing the cost to workers; improvements in benefits, however, continued.

We use data on the enrollment decisions of federal annuitants to estimate the influence of publicized ratings on health plan choice. We focus on the impact of ratings disseminated by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), and use our estimates to calculate the value of the information. Our approach exploits a novel feature of the data-the availability of non-public plan ratings-to...

Pharmacists who practice in hospitals and health systems (health-system pharmacists) play a vital role in maintaining and promoting public health. The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) believes that all healthsystem pharmacists have a responsibility to participate in global, national, state, regional, and institutional efforts to promote public health and to integrate the goa...

This study assesses the factors influencing the movement of people across health plans. We distinguish three types of cost-related transitions: adverse selection, the movement of the less healthy to more generous plans; adverse retention, the tendency for people to stay where they are when they get sick; and aging in place, enrollees' inertia in plan choice, leading plans with older enrollees t...

To determine the effect of survey-based, health plan report cards on employees as they selected their 1995 health plan, the authors surveyed two groups of Minnesota State employees, one of which received the report card and one that did not. Both groups were surveyed before and after their enrollment. The authors looked for report card effects on relative changes in the employees' knowledge of ...

OBJECTIVE To review ways in which pharmacists can help health plans shift their focus from cost to value. SUMMARY Health care delivery is a continuum. Employers have moved along the continuum looking for value; they are now looking for integrated strategies to decrease cost and improve productivity within the workforce. The key to any integrated strategy is innovative service delivery and gro...