The Synthesis Project
New Insights From Research Results
The Synthesis Project is an initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to produce user-friendly briefs and reports that synthesize research findings on perennial health policy questions. These products give policy-makers reliable information and new insights to inform complex policy decisions.
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About 14 results
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Paying for Quality: Understanding and Assessing Physician Pay-for-Performance Initiatives There is growing interest among private and public health care purchasers in using financial incentives to improve the quality of care delivered by physicians. This report reviews available evidence to detail the effectiveness of pay-for-performance on quality of care. |
Dec 19, 2007 | |
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Revisiting Crowd-Out Recent policy discussions on SCHIP reauthorization have focused attention on how to limit crowd-out, especially as states expand eligibility beyond low-income children. This brief reviews recent findings on the size of crowd-out, the effectiveness of anti-crowd-out... |
Sep 24, 2007 | |
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Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Access to and Quality of Health Care Eliminating racial and ethnic disparities in health is a major national objective, one of two overall goals for Healthy People 2010. Efforts to eliminate health disparities must incorporate strategies to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in health care as well.... |
Sep 20, 2007 | |
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The Built Environment and Physical Activity: What is the Relationship? Obesity is the second leading cause of preventable death in the United States, contributing to more than 100,000 deaths annually and a growing burden of chronic disease. Traditionally, interventions to increase physical activity and combat obesity have targeted... |
Apr 1, 2007 | |
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Medical Malpractice: Impact of the Crisis and Effect of State Tort Reforms Improving insurer financial ratios suggest that the malpractice crisis is now abating in some states, but malpractice crises are a recurring problem. Over the last 30 years there have been three periods of rapidly rising premiums, each sparking policy-maker concerns... |
May 1, 2006 | |
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How Has Hospital Consolidation Affected the Price and Quality of Hospital Care? A wave of hospital mergers and acquisitions in the 1990s transformed the inpatient hospital market. By 2003, almost 90 percent of people living in the nation's larger urban areas faced highly concentrated markets. Stakeholders and policy-makers have raised concerns... |
Feb 1, 2006 | |
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Understanding Medical Malpractice Insurance: A Primer Featured Product As the policy debate over the medical malpractice insurance crisis continues, dueling claims about its causes and suggestions for policy solutions have highlighted the need for a better understanding of how medical malpractice insurance works, why premiums change and... |
Jan 1, 2006 | |
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How Will Employers Respond to Coverage Reforms: Issues for Policy-Makers and Modelers The brief addresses three main issues for policy-makers and modelers regarding coverage reform: what drives the employer decision to offer coverage, who bears the cost of expanded health insurance and how modelers predict employer responses to new coverage policies.Key... |
Dec 1, 2005 | |
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Geographic Variation in Medicare Per Capita Spending: Should Policy-Makers be Concerned? In contrast to the uniformity of benefits and eligibility, Medicare spending varies geographically. This leads to the sense that some providers and beneficiaries "win"-receiving more services, higher revenues, better benefits-and some "lose." Concern over these... |
Jul 1, 2004 | |
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Public Program Crowd-Out of Private Coverage: What Are the Issues? Policy-makers are concerned about crowd-out-people dropping private coverage or employers changing their insurance offerings-because it limits the impact of public coverage expansions. When crowd-out occurs, scarce resources are used to cover people who would have... |
Jun 1, 2004 | |
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Expanding the Individual Health Insurance Market: Lessons from the State Reforms of the 1990s Many policy-makers support expanding health insurance coverage by providing tax credits to individuals with low or modest incomes to help them purchase insurance directly from insurers. Directly purchased insurance—known as individual or nongroup... |
Jun 1, 2004 | |
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Tax Subsidies for Private Health Insurance: Who Currently Benefits and What Are the Implications for New Policies? Policy-makers are considering a variety of new tax credit proposals to expand health insurance coverage. Understanding how current tax subsidies work and their role insupporting employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) is important when designing such policies. This brief... |
May 1, 2003 | |
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From Coverage to Care: Exploring Links Between Health Insurance, a Usual Source of Care and Access With the percentage of Americans lacking health insurance at historically high levels, federal and state policy-makers are seeking ways to extend coverage to more people, especially those with low incomes. As they do so, they should consider how insurance coverage... |
Sep 1, 2002 | |
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Are Health Insurance Premiums Higher for Small Firms? In 2000, about one in seven people—or about 14 percent of the U.S. population—did not have health insurance. The current economic downturn is likely to increase this problem. Contrary to popular belief, fully 80 percent of the uninsured are wage earners or... |
Sep 1, 2002 | |
