| HCFO Launches New Feature |
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In an effort to evolve, remain current, and better serve our readership, we are launching a new website feature called “Research Headlines.” Each month, we will highlight a news story, blog post, or other media report on a timely health care issue. We will then identify HCFO-funded studies that have or may produce findings that could help inform policy development related to the featured issue.
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| Research Headlines: Defining Essential Health Benefits |
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Among recent developments in the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Secretary of Health and Human Service’s decision to give states significant discretion in prescribing which benefits insurers must offer generated significant media attention. As described by Robert Pear in the New York Times, the ACA requires that insurance include “essential health benefits” in ten categories. For public and private policymakers faced with decisions about health insurance benefit design, HCFO’s portfolio of funded research includes several relevant
studies.
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| New Data for Researchers |
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| The Division of Health Care Statistics (DHCS) in the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) announces the internet release of two data products from the 2010 National Survey of Residential Care Facilities (NSRCF):
2010 NSRCF—the first-ever national probability sample survey of residential care facilities with four or more beds—collected data on residential care providers, their staffs and services, and their current residents. Interviews were completed with 2,302 facilities, and data were collected on 8,094 sampled residents. Residents were not interviewed.
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| Grantee Spotlight: Niteesh K. Choudhry, M.D., Ph.D. |
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Niteesh K. Choudhry, M.D., Ph.D., is an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and an associate physician in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics and the hospitalist program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Choudhry’s health policy research focuses on the development and evaluation of strategies to improve health care quality and reduce spending. He is particularly interested in drug benefit design and the impact of medication costs on
adherence for common chronic conditions such as hyperlipidemia, coronary artery disease, and diabetes.
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| News and Events |
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Grantees in the News
HCFO grantee Ateev Mehrotra, M.D., M.P.H, was recently interviewed by California Healthline, a service of the California HealthCare Foundation. In the video interview, Dr. Mehrotra discusses his research on retail clinics. His work covers several facets of these facilities including patterns of growth, quality of
care, and cost of care.
Events
Free HCFO Webinar: The Health and Retirement Study: The Best Data Source You’re Not Using
The Health and Retirement Study, created by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), is a major national panel providing data for researchers seeking to explore issues related to the health, decisions, choices and behaviors of individuals as they age. Housed at the University of Michigan, the survey draws responses from a representative sample of more than 26,000 Americans over the age of 50 every two years. The HRS is a valuable resource for health services researchers. It offers:
•Biennial survey data since 1992 with multi-disciplinary content
•Linked Medicare claims for over 18,000 participating HRS respondents
•A wide variety of public use and restricted files
•RAND-generated longitudinal files; derived variables covering a broad range of measures have been constructed and named consistently across waves
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Changes in Health Care Financing and Organization (HCFO) program is pleased to offer a webinar on best practices for obtaining and using HRS data for research. HCFO researcher Andrew Sfekas of Temple University will share his experiences in getting and working with HRS data. In addition, Helen Levy from the University of Michigan will describe the many exciting HRS public data products and provide resources, tips, and best practices based on her
organization’s role as the NIA’s contractor assisting researchers in obtaining and working with HRS data.
Date: February 1, 2012
Time: 1:00 – 2:30 p.m. ET
To register visit:
http://www.academyhealth.org/Training/ResourceDetail.cfm?ItemNumber=8201
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