The Healthcare Policy Podcast ® Produced by David Introcaso

Listen Now In 1997 the Congress reformed how it pays physicians under Medicare.  The new formula was termed the "sustainable growth rate" (SGR).   The impetus for the reform was to control better Medicare cost growth.   (Medicare physician payments now exceed $100 billion annually).   Largely because of the concern physicians would limit seeing Medicare patients if their Medicare reimbursement rat...

Listen Now Family caregivers are the most ignored providers of health care delivery despite the fact they constitute 30 percent of the adult population, or are 65 million Americans.  Caregivers are more typically women, over fifty, spending 20 hours a week (over an average of five years) providing care most frequently for a family member typically a parent with dementia.  They are literally the ba...

Listen Now Dr. Linda Randolph, President and CEO of District of Columbia's Developing Families Center (DFC),  discusses DFC's unique maternal and child health care model that has drawn international attention for its comprehensiveness and its high quality outcomes.   During this 23 minute interview Dr. Randolph offers her explanation for the causes of worse maternal outcomes among minority populat...

Listen Now For decades the US has experienced the highest infant mortality rate of high income countries.  The US also ranks poorly on other birth outcomes such as pre-term births, low birth weight and Caesarean sections.  Infant mortality rates for non-hispanic blacks is twice that of the national average.  In sum, about 25,000 infants die each year in the United States.  During this 37 minute in...

Listen Now Heart disease is the leading cause of death for women (and men) in the US, accounting for one in every four deaths, however, among women, only 50% recognize heart disease is their #1 killer.  Additionally, almost two-thirds of women who die suddenly of coronary heart disease have no previous symptoms.  (February is American Heart Month.)  During this 27 minute podcast Dr. Bennett discus...

Listen Now In January 2013 the Institute of Medicine released "Shorter Lives, Poorer Health" a 404-page report that found Americans die sooner, experience higher rates of disease and injury than people in 16 other like high-income countries and that these health disadvantages exist at all ages from birth to age 75.  During this 22 minute podcast Dr. Steven Woolf, the chair of the IOM panel that au...

Listen Now One of the most discussed provisions of the Affordable Care Act promising to "bend the cost curve" are Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs).   CMS has now selected over 250, moreover physician-led, organizations as ACOs coverning four million Medicare beneficiaries.   ACOs offer the promise of improved coordinated care, care quality and reduced Medicare costs.  During this 27-minute in...

Listen Now During this 28 minute podcast Dr. Gruman explains briefly the mission of the Center for Advancing Health.  She then defines what is patient engagement or patient participation by identifying ten categories that add up to 43 specific patient engagement behaviors.  Dr. Gruman then explains why patients are all too frequently unengaged in their own health care due to, for example, low lite...

Listen Now This 35 minute interview begins with Dr. Lynn describing the work of her Center in addressing how to improve care for the frail elderly.  Dr. Lynn then explains in some detail a three-year quality improvement intervention undertaken by 14 QIOs (Medicare Quality Improvement Organizations) that reduced hospitalizations and re-hospitalizations by almost six percent, i.e., she summarizes to...

Listen Now In this 34 minute podcast Dr. Paul Van de Water explains the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities' recent call for an additional $1.5 trillion in budgetary savings to stabilize the federal debt at 73% of the GDP.  He discusses the revenue option of limiting individual tax deductions.  On the spending side, savings from Medicare drug pricing and greater beneficiary means testing are di...

Listen Now Since the remedy to the "fiscal cliff" did not include structural reforms to Medicare and Medicaid and since Congressional Republicans will call for entitlement savings during the upcoming debt ceiling debate and beyond, Ms. Sarah Kliff, Health Reporter for The Washington Post and Ms. Amy Lotven, Editor/Reporter for Inside Health Policy, discuss what reforms to Medicare and Medicaid are...

Listen Now During this 30 minute interview Dr. Zuckerman discusses the long-standing and widespread overuse or misuse of anti-psychotics in medicating nursing home residents.  She identifies some of the more commonly known and used anti-psychotics, why their inappropriate usage poses serious dangers and consequences for patients and how they are being over-prescribed despite FDA "black box" warnin...

Listen Now In preparation for further federal health care policy reform anticipated next year several plans are floating around Washington, D.C., all promising, among other things, to "bend the cost curve" or improve health care affordability.  In this 33 minute podcast Mr. Rother briefly defines National Coalition on Health Care's goals and how and why its health care affordability reform proposa...

Listen Now In this 35 minute podcast Ms. E. Diane Champé discusses the prevalence of child abuse and her personal experience as a victim and a survivor.  She explains how and why the issue receives little attention, for example, responses she has received on Capitol Hill and elsewhere in attempting to draw attention to the subject and the inadequacies in abuse reporting and data collection, in fed...

Listen Now In this 38 minute interview Dr. Reischauer defines what's meant by the "fiscal cliff" and what's problematic about it near and long term.   He discusses what the Congress can possibly achieve during the lame duck session concerning unemployment insurance, the AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax), the so called "doc fix" and how sequestration might likely be addressed by the Congress and/or the...