Thousands of U.S. physicians have reached the first stage of “meaningful use” and received incentive payments through the HITECH Act. Yet doubts have surfaced about the sustainability of EHR diffusion, as well as about which providers will benefit from program incentives. In this paper we report the findings of a survey conducted among Hawaii physicians, in which we assessed the views of EHR ad...

Forms of Discrimination; o refusal to admit some or all Medicaid patients into vacant, certified beds; a violation of Congressional intent to provide Medicaid beneficiaries with services equal in amount, duration, scope and quality to those purchased by others. o requiring large cash payments from the family of a patient as a precondition for admitting the patient for care, or as condition of r...

The growth of medical malpractice liability costs has the potential to affect the delivery of health care in the U.S. along two dimensions. If growth in malpractice payments results in higher malpractice insurance premiums for physicians, these premiums may affect the size and composition of the physician workforce. The growth of potential losses from malpractice liability might also encourage ...

In theory, lump-sum transfers are a way to redistribute wealth without distorting production decisions. Recent agricultural policy reforms are an unusual large-scale application of this concept. The 1996 Federal Agricultural Improvement and Reform (FAIR) Act removed most price-contingent agricultural subsidies and replaced them with Production Flexibility Contracts—lump-sum payments with few ti...

We propose a probabilistically based incentive payment system for guideline implementation that provides rewards for physicians who follow practice guidelines and additional remuneration for physician leaders who engage in information sharing. All payments are based on observed outcomes of patient treatment. A fixed base payment forms the core of the system with probabilistic offsets calculated...