“Improving Incentives to Free Motivation,” calls for an approach to payment reform that harnesses the inherent motivation that doctors and patients have to make good decisions about health care. The authors reject the assumption that health care costs will drop and quality will improve if policymakers and payers simply...

On July 16, two New York City hospital networks announced they were merging to create the largest health care system in the metropolitan area and one of the biggest in the country. The CEO of one of the hospitals said the merger would pave the way for more “efficient”...

Despite some unique challenges, safety-net hospitals are achieving strong patient satisfaction results by focusing on compassionate care and quality outcomes. Do hospitals that treat more low-income, ethnically diverse patients with multiple comorbidities have a tougher time getting good patient experience scores than other hospitals, as some organizations contend? And...

Several Medicare Pioneer accountable care organizations that didn’t produce savings in the first year of the Obama administration’s most ambitious test of the accountable care model have told the CMS they will leave the Pioneer program and enter the Medicare Shared Savings Program model, while another two participants have...

Medicare is accelerating plans to peg a portion of doctors’ pay to the quality of their care. The changes would affect nearly 500,000 physicians working in groups. The federal health law requires large physician groups to start getting bonuses or penalties based on their performance by 2015, with all doctors...

The U.S. News & World Report “Best Hospitals” rankings for 2012-13 were released last week, followed by the usual media hoopla and a few chest-thumping press releases from hospitals at the top of the list. Whether the rankings actually mean anything is an entirely different story. The highest-ranked hospitals...

The biggest long-term concern with the American health care system is cost. The affordability of premiums, access to care and the impact of Medicare and Medicaid on state and federal budgets are all linked to the ever-rising costs of health care. Unless we bend the cost curve, the nation’s...