Variation in use of Medicare services among regions and selected academic medical centers: is more better?
- Collection:
- Health Policy and Services Research
- Author(s):
- Wennberg, John E., author
- Contributor(s):
- Commonwealth Fund, issue brief.
- Publication:
- [New York, New York] : Commonwealth Fund, December 2005
- Language(s):
- English
- Format:
- Text
- Subject(s):
- Health Services Misuse Health Services -- statistics & numerical data Medicare United States
- Genre(s):
- Technical Report
- Abstract:
- Initiatives for improving the quality of health care are now focused on stemming the underuse of "effective care"--therapy viewed as medically necessary care on the basis of clinical outcome evidence. But only a small proportion of the health care dollar is influenced by effective care. Most of the spending, at least regarding Medicare, is in two other categories. "Preference-sensitive care," in which treatment options involve tradeoffs that should be based on the patient's own values, tends not to be underused but misused. And "supply-sensitive care," in which the supply of resources governs the frequency of their use, is overused, particularly in the management of chronic illness. Hospital-specific measures that profile performance--such as the average number of days spent in the hospital during the last six months of life and physician labor inputs over that time--could help identify more efficient providers.
- Copyright:
- Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY license. (More information)
- Extent:
- 1 online resource (1 PDF file (viii, 43 pages))
- Illustrations:
- Illustrations
- NLM Unique ID:
- 101264893 (See catalog record)
- Permanent Link:
- http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/101264893