RAND advances understanding of health and health behaviors and examines how the organization and financing of care affect costs, quality, and access. RAND's body of research—conducted primarily through the RAND Health division—includes innovative studies of health insurance, health care reform, health information technology, and women's health, as well as topical concerns such as obesity, complementary and alternative medicine, and PTSD in veterans and survivors of catastrophe.
With the complex process of implementing the ACA underway, RAND research is tracking the progress of implementation and assessing the potential consequences of choices facing federal and state governments, employers, families, and individuals.
In its second term, the Obama Administration can restrain further health care spending growth—without compromising quality—by employing four broad strategies: fostering efficient and accountable providers, engaging and empowering consumers, promoting population health, and facilitating high-value innovation.
Commentary
If policymakers and the public expect the mental health community to play a significant role in preventing future incidents like Newtown, the mental health research agenda must become a higher national priority in future federal funding decisions, writes Terry Schell.
Blog
More than a dozen hospital staffers in four states have been terminated for refusing flu shots in the midst of a fierce flu season. Yet only one-tenth of health care employers require their staff to be vaccinated.
Report
Work presented in this report sought to assess the healthcare and economic burden of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection in the United Kingdom using a cohort simulation model.
Journal Article
This paper explores the association between work intensity, alcohol and/or other drug (AOD) use, and related risk factors and consequences among an at-risk youth sample that has received a first-time AOD offense.
Blog
The Medicaid expansion under the ACA will result in about 400,000 people newly insured in Arkansas by 2016. Of these, about 190,000 would be newly enrolled in Medicaid and the rest would be newly insured through the new insurance exchanges. The state is likely to save about $67 million for reduced uncompensated care costs for the uninsured.
News Release
Despite wide investments nationally in electronic medical records and related tools, the cost-saving promise of health information technology has not been reached because the systems deployed are neither interconnected nor easy to use.
Journal Article
Despite wide investments nationally in electronic medical records and related tools, the cost-saving promise of health information technology has not been reached because the systems deployed are neither interconnected nor easy to use.
Commentary
At a time when our country is teetering on the edge of a “fiscal cliff,” no challenge in health care is more important than reducing health care spending, writes Arthur L. Kellermann.
Commentary
As a Southerner who learned to shoot at an early age, I've never had a problem with guns. But emergency-room doctors like me also know how much damage they can cause if misused or allowed to fall into the wrong hands, writes Arthur Kellermann.
Content
Nothing can reverse the disaster at Sandy Hook Elementary School and return the victims to their families. But research can guide the community toward recovery—and may help prevent future tragedies.
Report
For Arkansas, the Affordable Care Act will result in an increase in GDP of around $550 million and the creation of about 6,200 jobs. The new law will also increase health insurance coverage by 400,000 newly insured individuals.
Commentary
Unfortunately, nearly every actor in our health care delivery system—hospitals, physicians, other health care providers, insurance companies and the manufacturers of drugs and devices—is currently focused on maximizing revenue growth, write Arthur Kellermann and David Auerbach.
Journal Article
Family environments present opportunities for interventions that promote physical activity. Family members share genetic risk factors associated with chronic health conditions, and physical inactivity tends to cluster within families and households.
Journal Article
The costs of knee and hip replacement in designated centers of excellence do not differ from costs in other hospitals. But hip replacements performed in such centers had lower complication rates. Complication rates for knee replacement did not differ.
Journal Article
About 37% of ED visits were for nonurgent conditions. Patients using EDs inappropriately tended to be younger, found EDs more convenient, had an ED referral by a physician, or had negative perceptions about providers who might be alternatives to ED care.
Journal Article
The use of propensity scores to control for pretreatment imbalances on observed variables in non-randomized or observational studies examining the causal effects of treatments or interventions has become widespread over the past decade.
Journal Article
The importance of developing personalized risk prediction estimates has become increasingly evident in recent years.
Journal Article
Men who experienced discrimination-related interpersonal trauma in their lifetime were more likely than were those who had not experienced such trauma to have engaged in unprotected anal intercourse with a male partner.
Journal Article
The authors develop an oral health literacy instrument for Spanish-speaking adults, evaluate its psychometric properties, and determine its comparability to an English version.
Journal Article
We use 4 years of data from the retiree health benefits program of the University of Michigan to estimate the effect of price on the health plan choices of Medicare beneficiaries.
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