UNC-CH Study Shows State Protects HMO Clients Poorly
...8; Certificates of coverage -- the handbooks for enrollees -- which should explain covered benefits and exclusions sometimes were incomplete and often confusing, she said. Plans used technical language, which made some descriptions of covered or excluded services unintelligible. Likewise, appeals mechanisms ...Study Shows Child Health Plus Eases Access, But Some Barriers Remain
...home foracute care, with Black, Asian and Hispanic enrollees remainingthe lowest rates. During Child Health Plus, minorities found itharder to get an appointment, with Hispanic and Black twice aslikely as non-Hispanics and Whites to report a problem. Hispanicswere twice as likely as non-Hispanics to have troub...For-profit hospital ownership means higher costs, Dartmouth-VA study finds
...of service. "Based on our results, if all Medicare enrollees had lived in areas served bynot-for-profit hospitals, we estimate that Medicare would have saved over $5billion in 1995 alone," Fisher says. "If the trends we observed continuethrough the year 2010, the excess Medicare costs associated with for-prof...Managed care plans not always better for preventive medicine, says UCSF study
...the Institute for Health and Aging, showedthat HMO enrollees were consistently more likely to receive preventive servicesthan people in non-managed care plans. But managed care has changed dramatically during the last decade, said KathrynPhillips, PhD, lead author of the new study and an associate professor of......oreover, more than one-third, 36.2 percent, of the enrollees were abstinent after six weeks with the help of the program and Nicorette compared with only one-quarter, 24.7 percent, who quit without the CQP. Specifically, abstinence rates at six and 12 weeks among the 3,627 smokers using nicotine gum in the s......ors covered under commercial plans and over 20,000 enrollees of a Medicare + Choice plan. The Medicare + Choice plan portion of this study was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Changes in Health Care Organization and Financing Program. Plan participants aged 65 or older enrolled in commercial hea......uation with chronic medications and the percent of enrollees affected. She told conference participants t...ntation included a comparison of utilization among enrollees of commercial plans versus Medicare + Choice plans with capped prescription benefits. National Healt...Insured minorities continue to face obstacles to health care, UCSF study reports
...ed access across insurance plans. Non-managed care enrollees were defined as those not enrolled in an HMO that ...pecified HMO providers or clinics. Managed care enrollees (across all ethnic/racial groups) do not necessarily face more barriers to health care than non-mana......ed were dermatologists and orthopedic surgeons. Of enrollees who chose to self-refer for treatment, 38 percent said they did so to save time and to choose their own specialist. Another 28 percent said they self-referred because they did not get along with their regular doctor, most often because the doctor ref...Doctors steer sick patients away from capitated HMOs
...mpensate health plans with healthier-than-expected enrollees and financially risky for providers who do not or cannot risk-select, such as safety net providers. Physicians also were asked whether they felt capitated payment plans undermined their ability to offer a quality of care equal to that of other types ...Stroke news tips for Friday, Feb. 8, 2002
...rcent were AfricanAmerican. Thirty percent of the enrollees were categorized as regular exercisers, which meant that they exercised longer than 20 minutes up to seven times a week. The regular exercisers had lower homocysteine levels (8.4 microcentimeters per liter) than non-exercisers (10.4 mcm/L) and the n...Robotic physical therapy improves movement long after stroke
...ted therapy. During a six-week treatment period, enrollees had one-hour therapy sessions with the robot three times a week. The robot-directed exercises were aimed at improving movement in the shoulder and upper arm, Fasoli says. At the end of the treatment we observed improved movement abilities in the e...American Thoracic Society Journal news tips for February (second issue)
...the likelihood of admission to the ICU by Medicare enrollees in the last year of their life varied from 20 to 40 percent among hospital referral regions in NewEngland. Also, research has shown that 84 percent of hospital costs are fixed (expenses hospitals must bear regardless of volume of care.) Such costs ...Health-care expert proposes overhaul of long-term care financing
...nced by general tax revenues plus premiums paid by enrollees would reduce the cost of private premiums and make private insurance "more affordable and less off-putting to prospective buyers," he wrote. He focuses his criticism on various Medicare restrictions that "no longer make sense" in the context of toda...Medicare+Choice bills may stop exodus of plans, but are not likely to expand enrollment in HMOs
...ncome beneficiaries, who make up 55 percent of M+C enrollees and rely on M+C plans because they cover drugs and...M+C plans provided $6 billion in added benefits to enrollees in 2001 when compared to the Medicare fee for service benefit package. If M+C were completely elimin...High mental stress linked with increased risk of cardiovascular death
...y for Evaluation of Cancer Risk (JACC Study). All enrollees had been given a health screening and a lifestyle questionnaire that asked, "What is the level of stress in your daily life?" Participants were followed for about eight years. There were 778 cardiovascular deaths among the men and 643 among the wom...Making individual health insurance market work
...rers selling individual policies to guarantee that enrollees can renew their policies at the average premium for their underwriting class, a contract provision known as "guaranteed renewability," write authors Vip Patel and Mark Pauly. Ensuring fair market rules for the individual market are important for a si...American Thoracic Society Journal news tips for September--first issue
...e lung function levels, using spirometry, of 4,517 enrollees (77.4 percent) out of the original 5,887 participants. The patients also provided answers to aquestionnaire on smoking in the follow-up research called by investigators "Lung Health Study 3." The original study contained smokers with mild to modera...Survey: Medicare gets higher marks from enrollees than private insurance
...icare beneficiaries are 2.7 times more likely than enrollees in employer-sponsored plans are to rate their health insurance as excellent and one-third as likely to say they couldn't get health care because of cost, according to a survey published today on the Health Affairs Web site. The findings of better sa...Life-saving properties of beta blockers extend to more patients
...uses in patients with coronary heart disease. The enrollees had a prior heart attack, an ejection fraction (EF) a measure of the heart's pumping strength less than or equal to 40 percent, and nonsustained ventricular tachycardia during EP testing. On average, they were enrolled 39 weeks after their most re...