The debate within the U.S. government about reforming the health care system centers on ways to control rising costs and assure high-quality, affordable care. RAND Health and its health care reform initiative—RAND COMPARE (Comprehensive Assessment of Reform Efforts)—provide objective research and analysis on topics that can inform the health care reform debate, including financing; increasing access, insurance coverage, and quality; decreasing costs; and promoting wellness and prevention.
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.
Payment reform affects market entry and exit, which in turn may affect market structure, access to care, quality and cost of care, and patient outcomes.
Innovative payment reform initiatives occur in both the public and private sector, but the optimal role in such reforms of the public sector, specifically the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is up for debate
Amenable mortality—deaths that should not occur in the presence of timely and effective health care—were higher in the U.S. compared to France, Germany, and the U.K. between 1999 and 2007. Deaths from circulatory conditions like cerebrovascular disease and hypertension are the main reason amenable death rates remained high in the U.S.
Productivity gains that can be achieved by widely adopting health information technology are likely to come from the reengineering of health care and may require new measurement tools to accurately gauge their impact.
As health care reform expands the use of "report cards" to grade health care providers, greater attention to reporting methods may be needed to assure the quality of such efforts.
The financial burden of prescription drugs has declined recently for the nonelderly. The decrease is probably due to increased use of generic drugs. The financial burden remains high among those with public insurance and those with low incomes.
The Affordable Care Act marks a new era in US health care and US medicine. This commentary suggests ways to monitor the act's effect on the health of the US population.
Emergency medicine is poised as a specialty to respond to health care changes and to lead the charge in transforming a disconnected, inefficient, and costly system.
A comprehensive systematic review of economic evaluations of complementary and integrative medicine (CIM) to establish the value of these therapies to health reform efforts.
Under bundled payments, doctors, hospitals, and other providers share one fee for treating all aspects of a procedure such as a hip replacement or a chronic disease like diabetes. The approach should eliminate unnecessary care and improve quality, but putting it into practice is proving to be more difficult than anticipated.
Research sponsored by the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute can help patients make better decisions by comparing the effectiveness of alternative therapies, but it is constrained from considering the costs of therapies it compares.
The electronic exchange of health information among healthcare providers has the potential to produce enormous clinical benefits and financial savings, although realizing that potential will be challenging.
This article examines potential effects of the Affordable Care Act's quality provisions on disparities and suggests disparities impact assessments to measure and monitor effects.
Analysis of the Massachusetts Health Care Reform Plan suggests national health care reform may require larger numbers of support personnel, rather than requiring greater numbers of physicians and nurses themselves.
This commentary argues that physicians must take the lead in identifying and eliminating waste in US health care.
An analysis of two rules that allow small businesses to avoid participating in health reform concludes they will have only a minor impact because relatively few businesses are likely to take advantage of the options.
An analysis of two rules that allow small businesses to avoid participating in health reform concludes they will have only a minor impact because relatively few businesses are likely to take advantage of the options.
Combining the best elements of academic medical centers and community health centers could deliver high-quality, cost-effective care to low-income Americans while training the next generation of health care professionals.
Although there has been considerable discussion of how the changes that the ACA makes in Medicare reimbursement might affect Medicare spending, on average, there has been little to no explicit recognition that the effects may vary geographically.
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