Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Akiko Takano
Deputy Director of Communications
212-204-6214November 9, 2010
Medicare Rights Center President Joe Baker Appointed to the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Geographic Variation in Health Care Spending and Promotion of High-Value Care
New York, NY—Medicare Rights Center President Joe Baker has been appointed to the Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Geographic Variation in Health Care Spending and Promotion of High-Value Care.
The committee will examine geographic variation in intensity and cost of health care services and in per capita health care spending among the Medicare, Medicaid, privately insured and uninsured U.S. populations. Specifically, the committee will:
- Evaluate variation in areas of differing sizes;
- Relate variation to input prices, practice patterns, access to, and supply and growth of services, and provider and payer organizations;
- Relate variation to uninsurance, patient access, care outcomes and quality measures;
- Evaluate contributions to variation due to physician discretion and patient health status and preferences;
- Consider variation unexplained by empirical evidence;
- Examine possible promotion of high-value care, with attention to high-cost, high-volume conditions, and explore the adoption of a value index based on measures of quality and cost that would inform adjustment of provider payments.
Taking into consideration the experiences of governmental and community-based programs that promote high-value care and comments of the public and stakeholders, the committee will then identify how payments and spending would be affected by a value index and recommend changes in Medicare payment systems to promote high-value care and address variation and the factors that affect variation among and within areas.
The first meeting will take place at the Institute of Medicine on Tuesday and Wednesday, November 9 and 10.
For more information, go to http://iom.edu/Activities/HealthServices/GeographicVariation.aspx.
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