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Dana
Hughes, DrPH - Associate Adjunct Professor, Department of Family and Community Medicine, UCSF
September 14, 2004
Since the 1980s, 10 million children have been added to the Medicaid program and 5 million have been newly enrolled in SCHIP. One of the goals of the expansions is to improve access to health care among low-income children. Dr. Hughes examined the impact of the expansions on access and utilization to determine if disparities between low-income and affluent children have been reduced.
Sarah Barber, DrPH - Fellow, National Institutes of Health Fogarty International Center
September 28, 2004
The Government of Indonesia enacted a zero growth policy on civil service recruitment in 1992, which severely impacted the Ministry of Health's ability to staff an expanded network of public health facilities. Dr. Barber's group exploited the external change imposed by the zero growth policy and used knowledge about how the government allocated health resources to explain the impact of health service quality on child height in Indonesia between 1993 and 1997. Via the reductions in the quality of medical care, they found that the policy resulted in negative health impacts among children.
David Card, PhD - Professor of Economics, UC Berkeley
October 12, 2004
The availability of Medicare after age 65 leads to a sharp rise in average rates of health insurance coverage, and a narrowing of inter-group disparities in coverage rates. Dr. Card's group studied the effects of these changes on the use of health care services, and on health-related outcomes. They found that availability of Medicare leads to a rise in doctor visits, a rise in hospitalizations, and a modest increase in self-reported health.
Download a copy of Dr. Card's paper.
Kelly Devers, PhD - Associate Professor, Dept of Health Administration, Virginia Commonwealth University
October 26, 2004
The Institute of Medicine's report, To Err Is Human, described the alarming prevalence of medical errors and recommended a range of activities to improve patient safety. Three general mechanisms for stimulating hospitals to reduce medical errors are professionalism, regulation, and market forces. Although some believe that market forces are becoming more important, Dr. Devers found that a quasi-regulatory organization (the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, or JCAHO) has been the primary driver of hospitals' patient-safety initiatives. Professional and market initiatives have also facilitated improvement, but hospitals report that these have had less impact to date. Dr. Devers will discuss the implications of these findings for hospital patient safety efforts, as well as general quality improvement.
Download a copy of Dr. Devers' paper.
William H. Dow, PhD - Associate Professor of Health Economics, UC Berkeley
November 9, 2004
The causal role of health insurance in improving health is still poorly understood. Dr. Dow reports on his investigation of the effects of the introduction of Medicare to U.S. elderly in 1966 using repeated cross-sections of the National Health Interview Survey from before and after 1966, as well as vital statistics mortality detail files for changing mortality trends 1959-1980.
Murray Ross, PhD - Director of Health Policy Analysis and Research at the Kaiser Permanente Institute for Health Policy, Oakland
November 23, 2004
Last December, President Bush signed the "Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003" into law. Two key provisions of the MMA, as it has come to be called, are the creation of a new pharmacy benefit and the establishment of a new playing field for health plans to participate in Medicare. These provisions, which take effect in January 2006, will introduce both challenges and opportunities for Medicare beneficiaries, health plans, and the federal government.
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