2013 Cost trends report: Commonwealth of Massachusetts

"To identify potential opportunities for savings in Massachusetts, we reviewed three cost drivers in depth: hospital operating expenses, wasteful spending, and high-cost patients." 

2013 Cost trends report 
Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Health Policy Commission

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Redirecting innovation in U.S. health care

"Our work for this project focused on identifying promising policy options to change which medical technologies are created in the first place, with these two related policy goals:

1. Reduce total health care spending with the smallest possible loss of health benefits.
2. Ensure that new medical products that increase spending are accompanied by health benefits that are worth the spending increases."

Redirecting innovation in U.S. health care: options to decrease spending and increase value
S Garber, SM Gates, EB Keeler, ME Vaiana, AW Mulcahy, C Lau, AL Kellermann
RAND Corporation
2014

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Improving dementia long-term care

"RAND identified 25 high-impact policy options covering five broad objectives to improve dementia long-term services and supports (LTSS) delivery system, workforce, and financing."

Improving dementia long-term care: a policy blueprint
RA Shih, TW Concannon, JL Liu, E Friedman
RAND corporation

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Report cards and outcome measurements to improve the safety of surgical care

"This review summarises the history of American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Project and its components, and describes the evidence that feeding outcomes back to providers, along with real-time comparisons with other hospital rates, leads to quality improvement, better patient outcomes, cost savings and overall improved patient safety."

The use of report cards and outcome measurements to improve the safety of surgical care: the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program
M Maggard-Gibbons
BMJ Quality and Safety, 2014; 23: 589-599

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Scorecard on local health system performance

"The first-ever Scorecard on Local Health System Performance provides U.S. communities with comparative data to assess the performance of their health care systems, establish priorities for improvement, and set achievement targets."

Rising to the challenge: results from a scorecard on local health system performance
The Commonwealth Fund
March 2012

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