Between 1950 and 1980, the physician fee component of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 488 percent. In contrast, an index of physician fees adjusted for 1) overall inflation, and 2) the declining proportion which is paid out-of-pocket by the patient, declined over the same 30-year period. This last observation, pointing to the erosion of the market, is important for structuring price competi...

It was the summer world collapsed, and I had almost begun collapsing with it. would have, it not been for sunshine birds lulling of river’s tide.I carry a picnic basket to water’s edge, sat, all summer, my novelsand notebooks, wrote down that felt.
 How is one supposed act in isolation? What does do?

Based on data from the 2004 National Physician Survey, physicians whose primary payment method was fee-for-service saw more patients per week than physicians remunerated by other methods, including salary or blended payments. This result did not change when examined according to specialty or specialty grouping (Table 1), physician age (Table 2) Family physicians versus specialists, type of prac...

We analyze Medicare's influence on private insurers' payments for physicians' services. Using a large administrative change in reimbursements for surgical versus medical care, we find that private prices follow Medicare's lead. A $1.00 increase in Medicare's fees increases corresponding private prices by $1.16. A second set of Medicare fee changes, which generates area-specific payment shocks, ...

While pay for performance (P4P) has created a nationwide buzz among health plans, physicians and hospitals, most P4P initiatives are still on the drawing board, according to findings from the Center for Studying Health System Change's (HSC) 2005 site visits to 12 nationally representative communities. HSC focused on performance-based payment for physicians, finding that only two HSC communities...

IMPORTANCE It has been observed that suicidal behavior is influenced by sunshine and follows a seasonal pattern. However, seasons bring about changes in several other meteorological factors and a seasonal rhythm in social behavior may also contribute to fluctuations in suicide rates. OBJECTIVE To investigate the effects of sunshine on suicide incidence that are independent of seasonal variati...

On April 2nd, 2014, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced a historic policy in its effort to increase the transparency in the American healthcare system. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Service (CMS) would publicly release a dataset containing information about the types of Medicare services, requested charges, and payments issued by providers across the country. In i...

Medicare payments for physician services under Part B were historically restrained by capping prevailing charges using the Medicare Economic Index (MEI). The MEI, an input price index for physician services that incorporates an adjustment for economywide labor productivity, has not undergone a major revision since 1975. The MEI is an important determinant of the annual volume performance standa...

Sunshine can have a profound impact on the systematic change in climate elements, such as temperature and wind speed, and in turn affects many aspects of the human society. In recent years, there has been a substantial interest in the variation of sunshine duration due to the dramatic global climate change. Hence, there is a need to better understand the variation of sunshine duration in order ...

Insurance denials delay payments for tests to medical institutions and can decrease patient satisfaction due to unexpected billing. Our institution utilizes an ambulatory electronic health record (EHR) for routine clinical care that includes computerized physician order entry (CPOE). At our institution as well as others, considerable cost is associated with inappropriate diagnostic coding of ne...