PRESS RELEASE: Top-ten pandemic profiteers, health system malfunctions take spotlight in 2020 Shkreli Awards
The crisis of Covid-19 created new opportunities for exploitation by this year’s greedy and misguided “winners.” More
Blog
The Federal Health Authority, a Federal Reserve System for Health Care: COVID-19 Has Exposed a Need for Change
The current COVID-19 pandemic shares many of the same causes as the Panic of 1907: lack of a coordinated federal response, lax state-level regulations, and absence of clear strategies to respond and recover from the initial outbreak. Therefore, we propose a new entity paralleling the Federal Reserve —the Federal Health Authority (FHA)—to anticipate health shocks, coordinate future responses, and address longer-term problems in the nation’s health and health care. More
Changing Pharmaceutical Industry Interaction in US Family Medicine Residencies
Pharmaceutical interaction in US residencies is common. This study explores the extent and type of learner interactions in US family medicine residencies with the pharmaceutical industry and compares interactions from 2008, 2013, and 2019. More
“I feel like my health is deteriorating with hers”: The struggles of caregiving and what clinicians need to know
Most Americans want to die at home, but we're not giving family caregivers the support they need to manage end-of-life care for their loved ones. More
Hospital Price Discrimination Is Deepening Racial Health Inequity
Data from hospital cost reports and clinical quality measures collected by the Lown Institute illustrates unequal facility usage by Medicaid patients in four of the country’s largest hospital referral regions. In Los Angeles, hospitals with clinical quality above the national median allocate just 23% of inpatient days to individuals with Medicaid, as compared with 54% of inpatient days for hospitals in the bottom two quality quartiles. Similar disparities emerge in New York and Houston, albeit to a lesser degree. In all these markets, many facilities with the highest objective quality scores serve very few Medicaid patients, who instead rely on publicly run facilities and small private hospitals with relatively poor clinical quality. More
Assessing Medicare’s value-based payment experiment
What's going well and what isn't when it comes to value-based payment experiments in Medicare. More
Evaluating harms and benefits of surgery for frail older adults
In the latest edition of the “Right Care Series” in the journal American Family Physician, Dr. Ann Lindsay from the Stanford University School of Medicine, and patient partners Helen Haskell and John James tackle the subject of evaluating older adults for frailty before recommending elective surgery. More
The Dallas-Fort Worth Hospitals for Everyone
Fortunately for North Texas, the region is home to two of the most accessible and valuable hospitals in the nation, according to the “Best Hospitals for America” list published by Washington Monthly. The publication partnered with the nonpartisan healthcare think tank Lown Institute to evaluate 3,200 hospitals, ranking those that “save lives, save money, and serve social justice.” John Peter Smith (JPS) Health Network was ranked No. 1 hospital in the nation in the ranking, and Parkland Health and Hospital System came in at No. 9. More
Change is how we show health care workers real support
The best way hospital leaders can show health care workers support is to commit to changing the broken health care system, now and after Covid-19. More
Fort Worth’s JPS hospital is no Mayo Clinic. It’s better, this national study finds
In a partnership with the Lown Institute, Washington Monthly created a ranking system that factored not only the clinical prestige of a hospital, but also its cost-effectiveness and service to the surrounding community. JPS was given high marks for caring for people living near the hospital, regardless of their ability to pay, and for taking on a leadership role in the community. More
The Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine: Good news and what we still don’t know
Ever since the initial press release from Pfizer came out, the medical community has been waiting for more detailed results to better analyze the vaccine's effectiveness and safety. Here's what the briefing document shows. More
VIDEO: An introduction to community benefits
What types of spending count as community benefits, and which types of hospitals spend the most? Shannon and Vikas tackle these questions and more on this week's Lown Hospitals Q&A. More
Can for-profit hospitals be anchor institutions?
How do nonprofit and for-profit hospitals differ when it comes to community engagement and community health investment? More
Drug companies’ payments and gifts affect physicians’ prescribing. It’s time to turn off the spigot
New research confirms what drug companies have long known: Industry cash and gifts influence how doctors prescribe drugs for their patients. More
When evidence becomes politicized, how do we talk about low-value care?
When we call unproven treatments "cures," we not only put patients at risk of harm, we create a framework in which evidence is no longer valued. Kelsey Chalmers and Judith Garber explore how this perspective could impact the "less is more" movement, and how we need to reframe the issue to build a coalition for change. More
Caring for the caregivers who feel the weight of the pandemic war
A support line allows physicians to speak about helplessness, rage, depression, anxiety, loneliness, insomnia, and — often — the uncomfortable sense that they no longer recognize themselves. More
Medicare spending and low-value care: Lessons from the Dartmouth Atlas and Lown Hospitals Index
To what extent does high Medicare spending reflect more hospital utilization of low-value care? Can low-value care within certain regions be attributed to individual hospitals? We compared data from the Dartmouth Atlas and the Lown Hospitals Index, to gain insight into these questions. More
Removal of Race From Estimates of Kidney Function: First, Do No Harm
Black individuals are 2 to 4 times more likely than others to progress to kidney failure and are less likely to receive optimal therapies, including kidney transplants. Reasons that contribute to these disparities include a variety of factors that are a direct result of structural racism, including poor access to health care, low educational attainment, and poverty. More
How Risk of Exposure to the Coronavirus at Work Varies by Race and Ethnicity and How to Protect the Health and Well-Being of Workers and Their Families
Since the beginning of the pandemic, workers in essential industries needing to work in person continued going to work and keeping the nation running while risking exposure to the novel coronavirus. More
Better collection, reporting of race and ethnicity data are essential for fighting Covid-19
Standardizing collection of race and ethnicity data across state and local health departments would help us better gauge Covid-19's impact. More