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  • UR and Medical Necessity

    This article was recently posted by Glenn Kraus on HCPRO's CASE MANGEMENT WEEKLY. With his permission, it is essential reading for HCM leaders. It highlights the reasons why the UR function can no longer be an 'add on' activity to the hospital case managers' role.  Executives lax attention to the issues surrounding 'medical necessity' is no longer realistic if the hospital wants to financially thrive.
  • Laying the Foundation

    Designing and executing a clinical resource management program is not easy.  It’s not so much that any one part of the program is difficult to design and implement.  Rather, it’s the combination of all the parts that becomes untenable.

     
  • What gets Measured gets managed!

    When we started this newsletter back in 1994, we reported the difficulties in obtaining information about payer denials.  Hospitals simply could not provide actionable information to identify the source of their denials...
  • The Business Case for Hospital Case Management

    When case management was introduced in hospitals in the mid 80s, it was accompanied by a promise to control costs at the bedside.

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  • Health Care Spending

Health Care Spending

  • 1-20-2012

As reported in 1996, the top 1 percent of the U.S. population accounted for 28 percent of the total health care expenditures and the top 5 percent accounted for more than half.  Now a new report from AHRQ using information from the Household Component of the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS-HC) for 2008 and 2009, indicates persistence in the level of health care expenditures over time.  The report states that in 2008, 1 percent of the population accounted for 20.2 percent of total health care expenditures, and in 2009, the top 1 percent accounted for 21.8 percent of the total expenditures with an annual mean expenditure of $90,061.  

In both 2008 and 2009, the top 5 percent of the population accounted for nearly 50 percent of health care expenditures. These data indicate that more than $1 in every $5 healthcare dollars went to treat one out of every 100 people. The annual mean expenditure was $90,061 for those in that 1%.

For more information try http://meps.ahrq.gov/mepsweb/data_files/publications/st354/stat354.pdf


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REFLECTIONS

Welcome to the February issue of REFLECTIONS, the new name for our monthly e-newsletter. The lead article is about 'leveling the playing field' between the hospital and its medical staff with the Federal prepayment processes adopted by the MACs and the RAC demonstration project.  We also feature a research stufy on meds that are responsible for ED visits and emergency rehospitalizations which supports our contention that the clinical pharmacist must take an active role in preparing patients and families for transition from the hospital.  As always, we welcome your comments and thoughts. 

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