Helping these underserved constituencies will require supplementing the aging traditional Medicare with more functional and durable enhancements. For a prototype of just such a model, we need only turn to a decades-old, soundly financed, and hugely popular All-American Plan. This plan is offered by a nationwide, heavily unionized employer with more than two million retirees. [...]

ORIGINS OF MEDICARE’S BANKRUPTCY Repeal of the bill would be reckless on two counts:

Recently, I was fortunate enough to watch Michael Silver, PhD, in action. Dr. Silver is Vice President of a consulting company called Sg2-Health Care Intelligence in Evanston, Illinois. I have the privilege of seeing many capable speakers during the course of a year as I visit hospitals and health systems across the country. Dr. Silver [...]

Yes, it’s that time of year again—no, I’m not talking about the presidential election, or the pre-Christmas shopping frenzy, or the fact that it will soon be dark when we get up and when we go home. I’m talking, of course, about the appearance of the long-awaited (?) fourth annual geriatrics issue of P&T.

While formulary guidelines for the new Medicare outpatient drug benefit are being hotly contested, as described last month in P&T, there are also considerable differences of opinion about the composition and authority of the P&T committees that will be appointed by each prescription drug plan (PDP) to ride herd over their formularies.

Current interventions to improve patient safety have emphasized a  systems perspective when one is analyzing mishaps and re-engineering the medication-use system. Some of the more popular system-based interventions include (1) improving facility design and workflow, (2) using technology and robotics, (3) adding forcing functions to procedures and equipment, and (4) improving product labels. Despite such [...]

Congressional pressure to improve  the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) surveillance of drugs, especially after they go on the market, has been building. So far, however, there has been a lot of smoke and not much fire.