The journal Health Affairs is widely regarded as a key forum for conversations about health policy. This month, Health Affairs published a special issue with 20 research papers, editorials and analyses around the broad topic of telehealth, including synchronous and asynchronous telemedicine as well as remote patient monitoring.
Of note, the journal is not a cheerleader for the field; in fact, it'...
A new report on telemental health in Health Affairs shows that, among rural Medicare beneficiaries, use of telemedicine for mental health is growing quickly but inconsistently across the population. The piece is meant to provide perspectives for legislatures as they consider increasing Medicare coverage of telemedicine.
“We found that from 2004 to 2014 there was rapid growth nationwide in...
A study published in Health Affairs and conducted by the RAND Corporation made a big splash this week with a bold claim: That telemedicine doesn’t actually reduce healthcare costs because the increased convenience leads to increased utilization, which ultimately costs more than in-person care would have.
The study looked at claims data from a cohort of 300,000 employees with access to Teladoc...
For health plans and employers, one of the key attractions of telehealth is the potential savings involved in replacing physician office and emergency department visits with less expensive virtual visits. But new findings published in the journal Health Affairs suggest that telehealth may increase overall healthcare spending by increasing utilization.
In fact, in looking at commercial claims data...
Healthgrades was one of the ratings looked at in the study.
As payors increasingly consider giving patients price transparency tools to compare hospitals, there are also a number of groups looking to provide comparison tools for hospital quality. But a new study in Health Affairs shows that those comparison tools, even from seemingly reputable sources, are wildly inconsistent.
"To better...
Four years ago Congress created a new Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation as part of its Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The Innovation Center's purpose was “to test innovative payment and service delivery models to reduce program expenditures... while preserving or enhancing quality of care.” Congress has allotted $10 billion to support the Innovation Center for its first ten...
Patients may start spending less time in the doctors office as electronic health records and patient-facing medical apps proliferate, according to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The study, which appears in the journal Health Affairs, looked at health informatics and health services research literature through June 2013 using Medline, the Cochrane Database and...
A qualitative study by Weiss Cornell Medical Center found many benefits to digital patient-physician communication.
A new qualitative study from Weill Cornell Medical Center, published in Health Affairs, suggests that physician-patient communication by email or a secure patient portal offers significantly more advantages than disadvantages. However, the study authors speculate adoption of...
Omada Health, developer of Prevent, an online and mobile diabetes prevention program, has locked up a $4.7 million, Series A venture financing package. U.S. Venture Partners (USVP) led this round of financing, with the help of the Vertical Group, Founder Collective, NEA, TriplePoint Capital, Kapor Capital and unspecified angel investors, Omada says.
The cash infusion will allow Omada to expand...
The U.S. spent $1.3 trillion in 2003 treating people with at least one chronic disease, according to a study in Health Affairs, and the price tag is projected to rise to $4.3 trillion by 2023. Chronic diseases account for about three-quarters of all healthcare spending in this country now, and that number won't be going down anytime soon if we continue on the current trajectory.
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