Originally posted on the Morning Consult. The federal government rates Medicare Advantage plans using a star system that evaluates clinical quality, patient satisfaction and regulatory compliance. This star rating system is designed to help America's seniors evaluate the quality of their health care options. And it has successfully incentivized hea...

Originally posted on Modern Healthcare.  Amazon, Berkshire-Hathaway and JP Morgan Chase created shock waves in January when they announced plans to launch their own healthcare company. On March 8, they generated even more buzz when news spread that a search was underway for a CEO to lead the joint venture. Unfortunately, not all news is good n...

Eleven years ago, I remember being a junior faculty member attending the first "Quality Fair" at the University of Chicago, and presenting my work among roughly 20 posters on how to measure quality for hospitalized older patients. While I am proud to say this poster actually won an award, I am also embarrassed to say that I did not improve anything...

Recently, Modern Healthcare published its list of the 50 most influential physician executives and leaders. The list included only seven women. There were seven in 2016, nine in 2015, and eight in 2014. Women comprise less than 10 percent of that list. As you will see, the math does not add up.Women make up more than 50 percent of physicians in tra...

The oft-used phrase, "from volume to value," was coined here in Pittsburgh by our own Harold Miller as the title of a framing paper for our first of three Payment Reform summits. It clearly had resonance. I hear it in every venue where health reform advocates gather. "Value" is hot, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is movi...

The changing health care landscape, accelerated by the Affordable Care Act, has signaled a move of the federal government, as well as private insurers, from fee-for-service to value-based reimbursements. To ramp up for this change, academic health centers are creating larger, integrated care delivery systems through mergers and acquisitions of hosp...