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Essay
COVID Could Surge Anywhere. This Tool Helps Hospitals Prepare
The number of new coronavirus cases is growing in most states. As the pandemic continues to strain U.S. health care systems, a tool developed by RAND researchers can help hospitals prepare for the worst.
Jul 1, 2020
Report
Setting U.S. Hospital Prices Could Cut Overall Health Spending by Billions
Price regulations face political obstacles and have been strongly opposed by medical providers. But setting prices for all commercial health care payers could reduce hospital spending by $61.9 billion to $236.6 billion a year if the rates were set at 100 to 150 percent of the amounts paid by Medicare.
Feb 18, 2021

Explore Hospitals

Journal Article
The Hospital Care Experiences of Older Patients Compared to Younger Patients
Patients ages 75+ reported less-positive experiences than patients ages 55-74, especially for measures of communication. These differences may be specific to inpatient care.
Dec 23, 2022
Journal Article
The Impact of the Affordable Care Act Insurance Expansions on Opioid-Related Emergency Department Visits
We leverage ACA coverage expansions to study the impact of health insurance on opioid-related emergency department visits while accounting for potentially confounding changes in relevant state-level policies.
Oct 27, 2022
Report
Health Care Consolidation: What Does the Evidence Say?
Hospital horizontal consolidation is associated with higher prices paid to providers. And there is some evidence of the same for vertical consolidation of hospitals and physician practices. What effect might the No Surprises Act—created to protect consumers from surprise medical bills—have on consolidation trends?
Sep 30, 2022
Journal Article
Higher Medicare Spending On Imaging And Lab Services After Primary Care Physician Group Vertical Integration
This study highlights how the growing trend of vertical integration, combined with differences in Medicare payment between hospitals and nonhospital providers, leads to higher Medicare spending.
Sep 20, 2022
Journal Article
Survey of Hospital Chargemaster Transparency
We compared hospital chargemaster data within a local hospital market where patients would reasonably try to shop or compare services.
Sep 15, 2022
Report
Psychiatric and Substance Use Disorder Bed Capacity, Need, and Shortage Estimates in California: Merced, San Joaquin, and Stanislaus Counties
In California, Merced, San Joaquin, and Stanislaus Counties sought to understand the gap between capacity and need for behavioral health beds. This report estimates bed shortages by triangulating estimates through multiple modeling methodologies.
Aug 26, 2022
Journal Article
Examining the Course of Transitions from Hospital to Home-Based Palliative Care: A Mixed Methods Study
Mixed methods study of transitions from hospital to home for palliative care/hospice.
Jun 1, 2022
Journal Article
Trends In Hospital Prices Paid By Private Health Plans Varied Substantially Across The US
We describe how commercial hospital payment rates changed relative to Medicare rates during 2012–19 and how trends differed by hospital referral region.
Apr 20, 2022
News Release
Trends in Hospital Prices Varied Widely Across the United States
The average prices charged to commercial health plans by hospitals, as compared to what Medicare pays, remained relatively stable between 2012 and 2019, but there was a large amount of geographic variation in the trends.
Apr 4, 2022
Journal Article
Cannabis Legalization and Cannabis-Involved Pregnancy Hospitalizations in Colorado
The primary objective of this study was to evaluate the association between presence of recreational cannabis dispensaries and prevalence of cannabis-involved pregnancy hospitalizations in Colorado.
Mar 4, 2022
Journal Article
APCDs Can Provide Important Insights for Surveilling the Opioid Epidemic, With Caveats
We compared Colorado's all-payer claims databases with other state-level databases, using analyses comparing quarterly rates of opioid-involved inpatient and emergency department visits and rates of 30-day opioid fills.
Mar 4, 2022
Journal Article
Changes in Emergency Department Encounters for Vomiting After Cannabis Legalization in Colorado
The findings of this study suggest that cannabis legalization in Colorado is associated with an increase in annual vomiting-related health care encounters with regard to exposure to these markets.
Mar 4, 2022
Multimedia
RAND Video Highlights of 2021
The best RAND videos from the past year brought our research to life in new ways. From the sidewalks of Pittsburgh to preschools in the Middle East, see how people around the world are using RAND research to make their communities safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous.
Dec 20, 2021
Journal Article
Physician Compensation In Physician-Owned And Hospital-Owned Practices
Vertical integration of physician practices with hospitals or health systems was associated with lower income for nonsurgical specialists, no difference in income for primary care physicians, and slightly higher income for surgical specialists.
Dec 10, 2021
Journal Article
Association Between COVID-19 Relief Funds and Hospital Characteristics in the US
CARES Act funds may have disproportionately gone to hospitals that were in a stronger financial situation prior to the pandemic compared to those that were not.
Nov 2, 2021
Report
Communicating research evidence to boards in health and care organisations: A scoping study
Boards in health and care organisations play a key role in the governance, strategy, direction and culture of an organisation. We conducted a scoping study on how health and care boards use research evidence and how this can be improved.
Sep 27, 2021
Multimedia
Pandemic Response: Strategies for Increasing Critical Care Capacity
RAND senior physician policy researcher Mahshid Abir describes a study aimed at identifying strategies for increasing critical care capacity in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Aug 27, 2021
Tool
Inpatient Hospitalizations for Firearm Injury: Estimating State-Level Rates from 2000 to 2016
The lack of reliable, state-level data on firearm injuries is a challenge for gun policy researchers. As part of the Gun Policy in America initiative, RAND researchers developed a publicly available longitudinal database of state-level estimates of inpatient hospitalizations that occur as a result of firearm injury.
Apr 27, 2021
Research Brief
Reducing Hospital Spending: Three Policy Options
RAND researchers have estimated the effects of policy options to reduce hospital prices paid by private health plans, outlining design choices and effectiveness levels for each approach.
Apr 21, 2021
Research Brief
Private U.S. Health Plans Pay Hospitals 247 Percent of What Medicare Would Pay
RAND researchers used data from 49 states and Washington, D.C., to assess hospital prices paid by private health plans. Data sources included $33.8 billion in spending from 3,112 community hospitals—more than half of community hospitals nationwide.
Feb 24, 2021

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Research conducted by

Researcher Spotlight

Mahshid Abir

Senior Physician Policy Researcher

Mahshid Abir is a senior physician policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. Also a practicing emergency physician, Abir's research evaluates the continuum of acute care delivery, including pre-hospital, emergency, inpatient, and ambulatory care, with a focus on policy-related issues pertaining…
Thomas W. Concannon

Senior Policy Researcher

Thomas Concannon is a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, assistant professor of medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine (2006–present), and Codirector of Stakeholder and Community Engagement at Tufts Clinical and Translational Science Institute (2015–present). For more…

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