Archive | June, 2010

Technology innovation, aging and public expectations drive up health spending around the world: OECD 2010

By on June 30, 2010 in Aging and Technology, Demographics and health, Global Health, Health Consumers, Health Economics, Medical technology, Public health

The 30 most developed countries, on average, allocated 9% of their national budgets to health care in 2008, up from 7.8% in 2000. The U.S., in contrast, spent 16% of GDP on health care, nearly one-half of which came from public treasury coffers. The graph illustrates the statistics for each OECD member nation and the [...]

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Health plans are in a service business: it’s not only about costs and benefit design for employers

By on June 30, 2010 in Administrative simplification, Employers, Health Plans, Supply chain

J.D. Power, an expert in understanding satisfaction across industries, has looked under the hood of employers and their satisfaction with health plans. In summary: it’s not only about the benefits and costs when it comes to health plan satisfaction. For employers, satisfaction is also based on near-equal parts of “service” in 3 guises: account servicing from the [...]

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Hospital marketing and Mad Men: national brands go direct-to-consumer

By on June 29, 2010 in Health care marketing, Health Consumers, Health Economics, Health reform, Health social networks, Hospital finance, Popular culture and health

This week’s issue of Advertising Age magazine dated June 28, 2010, includes cover stories about fast food advertising buoying cable TV revenues, car companies changing ad agencies, the Cannes advertising festival focusing on creativity and ROI, and…hospitals and health reform? Why do hospitals and health reform appear on the cover page of Ad Age? It’s the [...]

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Fiscal unfitness: U.S. hospitals still suffer negative impacts from the recession in 2010

By on June 25, 2010 in Electronic health records, Health care information technology, Health Economics, Health reform, Hospital finance

Bad debt and charity care as a proportion of hospitals’ total gross revenue increased for 9 in 10 hospitals in the U.S. according to the American Hospital Association’s press release, Hospitals Continue to Feel Lingering Effects of the Economic Recession. Today’s macroeconomic news that U.S. economic growth slowed in the first quarter of 2010 doesn’t bode [...]

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More money, less effective: the U.S. ranks last again in health system effectiveness

By on June 24, 2010 in Global Health, Health Consumers, Health Economics, Health Plans, Health Quality, Health reform, Public health

  Among seven developed countries – Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States of America — it’s the U.S. that ranks dead last in the effectiveness of the nation’s health system. In particular, the U.S. rates poorly on the issues of coordination of health care, cost-related problems causing [...]

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