Report Projects Millions More Uninsured By 2019 Unless Federal Health Reform is Enacted

A new report from Urban Institute projects that if reform efforts are not enacted quickly, as many as 65.7 million Americans could be uninsured within 10 years.

Researchers prepared the analysis by estimating how coverage and cost trends would change between now and 2019. Under any economic scenario—of which researchers explored three—there would be a tremendous strain on business owners and their employees as premiums increase significantly. While all income levels would be affected, middle-income, working families would be hardest hit.

This report was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

New Studies Explore Provider Interactions with Health Insurance Plans

As policy-makers consider ways to cut health costs, two studies look at the way providers and physician practices interact with health insurance plans. The studies, co-funded by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Changes in Health Care Financing and Organization (HCFO) Initiative and The Commonwealth Fund, were published in an online issue of Health Affairs.

The first study finds that physicians on average are spending the equivalent of three work weeks annually on administrative tasks required by health plans. The second study, "Peering into the Black Box" finds that clinicians spent more than 35 minutes per day performing billing and insurance related tasks.

New State-by-State Report Shows Gaps in Health Strongly Linked to Education Levels

Across the country, adults in every state fall far short of the level of good health that should be achievable for all Americans, according to a new report released by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Commission to Build a Healthier America. In fact, almost half of all adults ages 25 to 74 in the United States report being in less than very good health, and that rate differs depending on level of education.

Adults who have not graduated from high school are more than two and a half times as likely to be in less than very good health as college graduates. Furthermore, those who have graduated from high school but not gone to college are nearly twice as likely to be in less than very good health as college graduates.

Payment Reform Strategies to Sustain the Medical Home

As policy-makers discuss approaches to reform the nation’s ailing health care system, efforts to improve quality and reduce costs have never received more attention. One potential solution that is gaining support is to restructure primary care practices to incorporate essential principles of the “patient-centered medical home” clinical delivery model. Some early evidence shows that aggressive clinical care coordination, intense communication with patients, concentrated adherence to evidence-based measures and attention to avoiding hospitalization results in better-quality care being delivered at a lower overall cost.

The PROMETHEUS Payment® model is designed to encourage these better care patterns and can support the creation and sustainability of medical homes. This report details how its bundled episode of care payment model can be made operational today, without any major disruption to payer or provider operations, or forced integration into “accountable care organizations,” and yield significantly improved margins for physicians that deliver coordinated, patient-centered care.

Patients Reveal a Willingness to Trade Hands-On Medical Care for Computer Consultations

A qualitative study led by a research team at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) provides key insights into consumer preferences, suggesting that patients want full access to all of their medical records, are willing to make some privacy concessions in the interest of making their medical records completely transparent, and that, going forward, fully expect that computers will play a major role in their medical care, even substituting for face-to-face doctor visits.

“We set out to study patient attitudes toward electronic personal health records and other emerging and future electronic health information technologies,” explains the study’s lead author Jan Walker, R.N., M.B.A., instructor in medicine in the Division of General Medicine and Primary Care at BIDMC and Harvard Medical School. “And we learned that, for the most part, patients are very comfortable with the idea of computers playing a central role in their care.” In fact, she adds, patients said they not only want computers to bring them customized medical information, they fully expect that in the future they will be able to rely on electronic technology for many routine medical issues.

The study appears in the June 2009 issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

5th Annual Games for Health Conference Next Month

The 5th Annual Games for Health Conference is coming to Boston June 11, 2009, with a lineup of speakers from game development firms, health and medical institutions, academic and research institutions and elsewhere. This conference, sponsored by RWJF, has become the premier event for networking, identifying new opportunities and sharing learning in this dynamic space.

Leadership for Healthy Communities' Toolkit Offers Concrete Resources for Policy-Makers Working to Prevent Childhood Obesity

Leadership for Healthy Communities, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, released the Action Strategies Toolkit to help provide guidance on the best approaches policy-makers can use to make their states, communities and schools healthier places to live.

The toolkit offers practical examples of policy approaches and resources covering a wide range of issues, including increasing access to parks and recreation centers, improving safety for bicyclists and pedestrians, offering healthier foods in schools, and attracting grocery stores that provide healthy, affordable foods to lower-income communities.

$2.3-Million Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Grant Expands Reclaiming Futures

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation announced a new $2.3-million grant to support the addition of three more project sites to Reclaiming Futures. The grant “will help thousands of young people get the support they need to turn their lives around,” says Laura Nissen, Ph.D., national director of Reclaiming Futures and associate professor of social work at Portland State University.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation launched Reclaiming Futures in 2002 to reinvent how juvenile courts work. The initiative brings together judges, probation officers, treatment providers, families and community members to improve drug and alcohol treatment for young people in trouble with the law. During a five-year pilot phase, 10 communities created and tested a new six-step model that screens teens for drug and alcohol problems, assesses the severity of substance use, provides prompt access to a treatment plan coordinated by a service team, and connects teens with employers, mentors and volunteer service projects.