The December 2012 edition of  Health Affairs is available at the FMHI Research Library.

Volume 31, number 12: “Topics in Public Health, Medicare Advantage, Health Reform Post Election”

From the Editor-in-Chief

• ‘A pony in here somewhere’: Seeing hope in health care (Dentzer, 2602)

Entry Point

• Post election, The Affordable Care Act leaves the intensive care unit for good (Jacobs & Ario, 2603)

Medicare Advantage

• Analysis of Medicare Advantage HMOs compared with traditional Medicare shows lower use of many services during 2003-09 (Landon, Zaslavsky, Saunders, Pawlson, Newhouse, Ayanian, 2609)
• Steps to reduce favorable risk selection in Medicare Advantage largely succeeded, boding well for health insurance exchanges (Newhouse, Price, Huang, McWilliams, Hsu, 2618)
• New risk-adjustment system was associated with reduced favorable selection in Medicare Advantage (McWilliams, Hsu, Newhouse, 2630)

People and Places

• Casting the light of the dismal science on health care (2629)

Consumer-Directed Plan

• In consumer-directed health plans, a majority of patients were unaware of free or low-cost preventive care (Reed, Graetz, Fung, Newhouse, Hsu, 2641)

Pay-for-Performance

• Hospital pay-for-performance programs in Maryland produced strong results, including reduced hospital-acquired conditions (Calikoglu, Murray, Feeney, 2649)

Transitional Care

• Low-cost transitional care with nurse managers making mostly phone contact with patients cut rehospitalization at a VA hospital (Kind, Jensen, Barczi, Bridges, Kordahl, Smith, Asthana, 2659)

Interprofessional Education

• Results of an effort to integrate quality and safety into medical and nursing school curricula and foster joint learning (Headrick, Barton, Ogrinc, Strang, Aboumatar, Aud, Haidet, Lindell, Madigosky, Patterson, 2669)

Malpractice

• Disclosure-and-resolution programs that include generous compensation offers may prompt a complex patient response (Murtagh, Gallagher, Andrew, Mello, 2681)

The Care Span

• Hospices’ enrollment policies may contribute to underuse of hospice care in the United States (Carlson, Barry, Cherlin, McCorkle, Bradley, 2690)

Reducing Tobacco Use

• Smoking bans linked to lower hospitilizations for heart attacks and lung disease among Medicare beneficiaries (Vander Weg, Rosenthal, Vaughan Sarrazin, 2699)
• Analysis of media campaign promoting smoking cessation suggests it was cost-effective in prompting quit attempts (Villanti, Curry, Richardson, Vallone, Holtgrave, 2708)
• Simulation of quitting smoking in the military shows higher lifetime medical spending more than offset by productivity gains (Yang, Dall, Zhang, Zhang, Arday, Dorn, Jain, 2717)

Immigrant Health

• Undiagnosed disease, especially Diabetes, casts doubt on some of reported ‘advantage’ of recent Mexican immigrants (Barcellos, Goldman, Smith, 2727)

Public Health Topics

• Salt and public health: Contested science and the challenge of evidence-based decision making (Bayer, Johns, Galea, 2738)
• Reducing racial and ethnic disparities in colorectal cancer screening in likely to require more than access to care (Stimpson, Pagán, Chen, 2747)
• Bioterrorism and biological threats dominate federal health security research; Other priorities get scan attention (Shelton, Connor, Uscher-Pines, Pillemer, Mullikin, Kellermann, 2755)

Global Health

• China’s rapidly aging population creates policy challenges in shaping a viable long-term care system (Feng, Liu, Guan, Mor, 2764)
• In urban and rural India, a standardized patient study showed low levels of provider training and huge quality gaps (Das, Holla, Fas, Mohanan, Tabak, Chan, 2774)

Young Leaders

• Applying data analytics and information exchange to improve care for patients (Amarasingham, 2785)
• Promoting health and development in Detroit rhrough gardens and urban agriculture (Atkinson, 2787)
• Employing behavioral economics and decision science in crucial choices at end of life (Halpern, 2789)
• Understanding the health impact of racism—and trying to reverse it (Kwate, 2791)
• Using digital communications and social media to redraw rhe cardiac care map (Merchant, 2793)
• Creating a new model to help health care providers write prescriptions for health (2795)
• Bucking conventional wisdom and focusing on disparities to address kidney disease (Peralta, 2797)
• Drawing on communityorganizing to advance public health in Minnesota and beyond (Schrantz, 2799)
• Bringing the concepts of peer coaches and local health workers from Africa to Harlem (Singh, 2801)
• Healing a community by innovating at a community health center (2803)

Web First

• A survey of primary care doctors in ten countries shows progress in use of health information technology, less in other areas (Schoen, Osborn, Squires, Doty, Rasmussen, Pierson, Applebaum, 2805)

Narrative Matters

• As she lay dying: How I fought to stop medical errors from killing my  mom (Welch, 2817)

Grantwatch

• The SCAN Foundation’s framework for advancing integrated person-centred care (Shugarman, 2821)