This is the Health Chairs e-bulletin for June/July 2006.

Resources Online

Access & Medicaid...Quality & Chronic Conditions...Workforce...Disparities...Public Health…

Access

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) has released a report summarizing data on HSA-qualified health plans. http://www.ahipresearch.org/pdfs/RS22417.pdf

More on the Deficit Reduction Act (DRA)

FamiliesUSA has released a series of consumer-oriented briefs with very clear descriptions of the likely implications of the act for their constituents. In addition to an overview they have briefs on the requirement to prove citizenship, benefit design changes, and cost-sharing and premiums. http://www.familiesusa.org/issues/medicaid/medicaid-alert-dra/index.html

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has issued a study on the uptake of consumer-directed health plans, Consumer-Directed Health Plans: Small but Growing Enrollment Fueled by Rising Cost of Health Care Coverage GAO-06-514 http://www.gao.gov/docdblite/details.php?rptno=GAO-06-514

From the California Healthcare Foundation comes a new report and links to other studies on Consumers in Health Care: Creating Decision-Support Tools That Work. http://www.chcf.org/topics/healthinsurance/index.cfm?itemID=121893

They also have released comparisons of several access-related bills before the California legislature, applying their coverage expansion framework to the analyses. http://www.chcf.org/topics/healthinsurance/coverageexpansion/index.cfm?itemID=109985

Kaiser has a new issue module featuring a collection of resources on CDHC at http://cme.kff.org/Key=10937.DLR.H.C.Gny56

The Citizens’ Health Care Working Group was created by the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003. After a series of community roundtables and on-line polls, it has issued its first interim report. The document sets out a lot of desirable goals but is very broad and does not give a roadmap for making tough choices. http://www.citizenshealthcare.gov/recommendations/interim_recommendations.pdf

Quality and Chronic Conditions

A great quote on disease and disparities from Commonwealth’s monthly bulletin, http://www.cmwf.org/publications/publications_show.htm?doc_id=371925#issue

Quality Matters:

From a health care perspective, [Dr. Neil] Calman notes, "we enter people's lives at the late stage," when the effects of a lifetime of poverty have already taken their toll on disease development and progression. "You can't enter this late in the game and expect that doing the same things for all patients will fix it all," he says. "This would be akin to intervening in the educational system at the 11th grade and expecting equal competency at graduation."

Paying for more care doesn’t buy more health. That’s the bottom line of a new analysis of Medicare spending by the Dartmouth Atlas project, which looks at regional variations in spending. http://www.dartmouthatlas.org/press/2006_atlas_press_release.shtm

Virginia’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission has taken a look at the Impact of an Aging Population on State Agencies http://jlarc.state.va.us/Reports/Rpt329.pdf

Estimated Impact of Aging Population on Total Medicaid Expenditures for the Aged

Providers and Workforce

The Institute of Medicine's Committee on the Future of Emergency Care in the United States Health System has just issued three reports on the grave statge of emergency services in the US. Hospital-Based Emergency Care: At the Breaking Point , Emergency Care for Children: Growing Pains and Emergency Medical Services At the Crossroads. The IOM plans to take the finding on the road with a series of regional meetings. Information about the project and links to the reports can be found at http://www.iom.edu/?id=35029. An audio of the press conference and other resources can be found at http://nationalacademies.org/morenews/20060614b.html

Medical malpractice is the subject of a couple of new roundups courtesy of RWJ. Reviews of recent findings can be found in a roundup of recent research on the issue, The Current Malpractice Crisis Cycle? http://newsmanager.commpartners.com/ahhcfo/issues/2006-06-16/index.html

Two reports by Michelle Mello from the Synthesis Project brings together and objectively evaluates the studies on the impact of state tort reforms on the medical malpractice crisis: Understanding medical malpractice insurance: A primer http://www.rwjf.org/publications/synthesis/reports_and_briefs/pdf/no10_primer.pdf and a policy brief that focuses on state reforms. http://www.rwjf.org/publications/synthesis/reports_and_briefs/pdf/no10_policybrief.pdf

The Missouri Hospital Association has published hospital-by-hospital information in community benefits—free care, discounts and community programs that hospitals provide, as compared to the tax benefits they receive. Hospitals in many parts of the country have been criticized for charging hight rates to people without coverage or not providing free services commensurate with the advantage they receive as nonprofit institutions. The site also has hospital data on heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia. http://www.focusonhospitals.com/aspx/reports/financial.aspx

Two from GAO:

Foreign Physicians: Preliminary Findings on the Use of J-1 Visa Waivers to Practice in Underserved Areas. GAO-06-773T, May 18, 2006 (26 pages). http://www.gao.gov/docdblite/details.php?rptno=GAO-06-773T

General Hospitals: Operational and Clinical Changes Largely Unaffected by Presence of Competing Specialty Hospitals. GAO-06-520, April 7, 2006 (43 pages). http://www.gao.gov/docdblite/details.php?rptno=GAO-06-520

Public Health

Pandemic Flu planning is under way. The federal government’s clearinghouse on the topic includes links to state planning activities with a clickable map linking to each state at http://www.pandemicflu.gov/plan/tab2.html

Disparities

The New York Academy of Medicine has just released a report highlighting the importance of language barriers for New York City immigrant children. http://www.fcd-us.org/PDFs/05-17-06LanguageBarrierReportMay2006.pdf

Several months worth of past Chairs e-bulletins are archived at: http://www.ncsl.org/programs/health/forum/chairs/ebull/index.htm

Have any questions you'd like answered? A topic for which you’d like us to gather resources? Do you have a report of your own you'd like to share with your peers? Drop us a line…(and fill out and fax back the Chairs meeting RSVP below if you haven’t done so yet)

Kala Ladenheim, Ph. D. Program Director Forum for State Health Policy Leadership National Conference of State Legislatures ph: 202-624-3557 fx: 202-737-1069 kala.ladenheim@ncsl.org

Donna Folkemer, Group Director Forum for State Health Policy Leadership National Conference of State Legislatures ph: 202-624-8171 fx: 202-737-1069 Donna.Folkemer@ncsl.org

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