Health information exchange (HIE) systems facilitate access to patient information for a variety of health care organizations, end users, and clinical and organizational goals. While a complex intervention, organizations' usage of HIE is often conceptualized and measured narrowly. We sought to provide greater specificity to the concept of HIE as an intervention by formulating a typology of orga...

The claim that managed care plans are more efficient than fee-for-service plans has been made so often that it has reached the status of folklore, but the evidence is inconclusive. The claim is usually based on one or both of the following errors: (1) lower medical care costs mean lower total costs (medical plus administrative costs) and (2) lower HMO premiums mean HMOs are more efficient than ...

This study explores the system of intermediate organizations in Dutch health care as the crucial system to understand health care policy-making in the Netherlands. We argue that the Dutch health care system can be understood as a system consisting of distinct but inter-related policy domains. In this study, we analyze four such policy domains: Finances, quality of care, manpower planning and ph...

BACKGROUND Language barriers have a major impact on both the quality and the costs of health care. While there is a growing body of evidence demonstrating the detrimental effects of language barriers on the quality of health care provision, less is known about their impact on costs. This purpose of this study was to investigate the association between language barriers and the costs of health c...

OBJECTIVES This study examined the association between type of health insurance coverage and quality of primary care as measured by its distinguishing attributes--first contact, longitudinality, comprehensiveness, and coordination. METHODS The household component of the 1996 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey was used for this study. The analysis primarily focused on subjects aged younger than ...

î Understand the diff erent types of health insurers and managed health care organizations î Understand key diff erences between these types of organizations î Understand the inherent strengths and weaknesses of each model type î Understand the diff erence between insured and self-funded health plans î Understand the new payer envisioned in the Patient Protection and Aff ordable Care Act (ACA) ...