Today the United States may be on the cusp of changing from a cost-unconscious health care system to one that seeks value. The consequences of adopting a value-based approach to coverage have not been well studied; however, several broad strands of the health literature suggest that spending could be reduced by as much as 30 percent without adversely affecting health.

Utilization management (UM) is now an integral part of most public and private health plans. Hospital review, until recently the primary focus of UM, is associated with a reduction in bed days and rate of hospital cost increases. These reductions appear to have had limited impact on aggregate health care costs because of increases in unmanaged services. In the future, with electronic connectivi...

The spread of rumors through social media and online social networks can not only disrupt the daily lives of citizens but also result in loss of life and property. A rumor spreads when individuals, who are unable decide the authenticity of the information, mistake the rumor as genuine information and pass it on to their acquaintances. We propose a solution where a set of individuals (based on t...

The Council collects over 3.8 million inpatient hospital discharge and ambulatory/outpatient procedure records each year from hospitals and freestanding ambulatory surgery centers in Pennsylvania. This data, which includes hospital charge and treatment information as well as other financial data, is collected on a quarterly basis and is then verified by PHC4 staff. The Council also collects dat...

Calls for medical care cost containment are all around us. Although the evidence that costs are too high is strong, the evidence that they are rising too quickly is much weaker. The principal cause of increasing costs appears to be the increased capabilities of medicine; the scant evidence available suggests that to date the public has wanted to pay for most of these capabilities. Effective glo...