In our Fixing Health Care package, we look at the two leading models. In this article, Brent C. James and Gregory P. Poulsen make the case for capitated payment. They say that approach is o rein in health care costs in the United States, we should look to the ideas of W. Edwards Deming, the legendary management guru who showed companies how to cut waste from work processes and lower operating c...

BACKGROUND Although teamwork is known to optimise good health care, organisational arrangements and funding models can foster, discourage, or preclude functional teamworking. Despite a new, enhanced population-based funding system for primary care in New Zealand, bringing new opportunities for more collaborative practice, fully implemented healthcare teamwork remains elusive. AIM To explore p...

Through Sacred Heart Health System (SHHS), Eugene, OR, physicians, payers, and hospitals are designing a network that will integrate care and improve access by reducing healthcare costs. Together, system members design cost-saving incentives and the products the system offers the community. They promote managed care as the most efficient means to coordinate care and reduce costs. All participan...

This DataWatch examines an outpatient capitated payment system, in the state of Oregon, designed to enhance community services for persons with chronic mental illness who had repeatedly been hospitalized involuntarily. Special state funds and Medicaid dollars were used to pay providers prospectively on a risk-adjusted basis for the delivery of outpatient mental health services. During the three...

OBJECTIVE To describe changes in hospitals' competitive strategies, specifically the relative emphasis placed on strategies for competing along price and nonprice (i.e., service, amenities, perceived quality) dimensions, and the reasons for any observed shifts. METHODS This study uses data gathered through the Community Tracking Study site visits, a longitudinal study of a nationally represen...