RAND Health Care research on the organization and capacity of the health care system takes a broad perspective. Our work has examined how organization affects the system’s ability to provide high-quality care and to use resources efficiently and effectively. Many studies have focused on the link between health system organization and the ability of the public health system to respond to public health emergencies, whether natural or the result of hostile action.
The 10Plan is a self-pay plan for individuals currently uninsured or covered by a private nongroup health insurance plan. The authors built a microsimulation model to estimate health care spending under both the status quo and the 10Plan.
The article examines whether subjective performance assessments from health system executives match objective performance assessments and qualitatively explores ways to achieve high performance.
The 10Plan is a self-pay plan for individuals currently uninsured or covered by a private nongroup health insurance plan. Individuals would pay no premiums up front, face Medicare rates, pay a copayment for each encounter, and have the option to pay cash for services or borrow from the government at a low interest rate to pay for care. The authors built a microsimulation model to estimate health care spending under the status quo and the 10Plan.
States have made significant policy changes to SUD treatment policies during COVID-19, particularly regarding telehealth and facilitation of remote care. Understanding these changes could help policymakers prioritize guidance during the pandemic and for future health crises.
Family caregivers provide a significant portion of health and support services in the United States to individuals with serious illnesses but are often overlooked by existing health care systems. The authors describe why, in light of COVID-19, it is more critical than ever to integrate family caregivers into patients' health care teams and highlight several solutions for accomplishing this goal.
Examines physicians use of telemedicine during COVID-19 to quantify physician-level substitution between in-person interactions with patients and virtual interactions.
Most people with co-occurring substance use and mental health disorders never get the high-quality care they need to recover. To address this issue, RAND researchers created a toolkit to support the delivery of effective, evidence-based pharmacotherapy for clients with co-occurring alcohol and/or opioid use and mental health disorders in mental health clinics.
The United States is at a time of promise for historic transformation in mental health care. This report describes the landscape of mental health in the United States and identifies opportunities for transformative change. The result is an analysis of key problems and the research evidence for solutions, with recommendations to promote change to improve the lives of the millions of Americans living with mental illness.
Stakeholders such as palliative care patients and their providers and health systems lack actionable measures to assess performance and guide improvement efforts in palliative care. In this report, the authors describe the results of their national beta field test for a performance measure designed to assess the extent to which patients who used ambulatory palliative care received the help they wanted for their pain.
Stakeholders such as palliative care patients and their providers and health systems lack actionable measures to assess performance and guide improvement efforts in palliative care. In this report, the authors describe the results of their national beta field test for a performance measure designed to assess the extent to which patients who used ambulatory palliative care felt heard and understood by their palliative care provider and team.
More than 46 million Americans live with a mental illness, yet only half of those Americans receive treatment. Even fewer people receive high-quality care that would give them the best treatment possible. This tool is designed by RAND researchers to help connect mental health systems, policy leaders, and decisionmakers with resources and evidence-based solutions that could help transform the complex mental health landscape in the United States.
Organizational capacity and readiness constraints impede the delivery of medication treatment for alcohol use disorder in a large mental health system.
To determine whether and how to respond to the evolving health care market, policy makers need to better understand how health systems are actually organized and the relationships among the entities that comprise them.
To advance understanding of primary care clinic productivity, the authors reviewed relevant literature and convened a diverse set of stakeholders to explore definitions of productivity, input, and output in primary care; identify relevant tools; and establish consensus on key aspects of primary care productivity.
We developed and established the psychometric properties of survey measures describing normative and interpersonal integration.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, visit volume at a sample of FQHCs declined modestly for primary care visits and remained stable for behavioral health visits because telehealth visits replaced in-person visits.
The study sough to develop and test a patient-reported outcome measure (PROM) for suitability in digital remote asthma symptom monitoring to identify uncontrolled asthma.
A RAND team identified three goals for transforming the U.S. mental health care system and pinpointed 15 opportunities to drive systemic improvements in access, use, and quality that would help tens of millions of Americans.
As the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted in-person medical care, emergency regulatory changes were implemented to promote use of telehealth.
COVID-19 has affected telehealth utilization disproportionately. The increase in telemedicine use was greatest among patients in counties with low poverty levels, among patients in metropolitan areas, and among adults compared with children.
