Kaiser Health News, Cost & Quality Blog

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s ambitious experiment in health care is supposed to cut costs as it fills the needs of hard-to-reach people. The program’s start is chaotic and limited, but it shows promise.

Hospitals are facing mixed reviews regarding their efforts to comply with a federal requirement that they post information about prices related to nearly every health care service they provide.

Doctors have no national standards on when to order urine tests to check whether adult ADHD patients are properly taking their prescription stimulants. Some patients are subjected to much more frequent testing than others.

The federal government wants to change the way health insurers use prior authorization — the requirement that patients get permission before undergoing treatment. Designed to prevent doctors from deploying expensive, ineffectual procedures, prior authorization has become a confusing maze that denies or delays care, burdens physicians with paperwork, and perpetuates racial disparities. New rules may not be enough to solve the problems.

Estos comportamientos se recogen en una encuesta con 3,325 participantes como parte de un estudio cuyo objetivo fue llamar la atención sobre el esfuerzo que deben realizar los pacientes negros para obtener una atención médica de calidad.

Many Black patients also try to be informed and minimize questions to put providers at ease. “The system looks at us differently,” says the founder of the African American Wellness Project.

More than 600,000 people are released from prisons every year, many with costly health conditions but no medications, medical records, a health care provider, or insurance.

Lawmakers are considering creating standards to set Medicaid reimbursement rates. But industry observers wonder whether the move would be too little, too late to bolster a beleaguered industry.