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Health Literacy Could Reduce Medicare Expenses
MedPAC, the Congressional advisory committee on Medicare, discussed how to get patients more involved in their health decisions.
Patients — particularly minorities and those on Medicare – are not actively making decisions about their treatments and procedures because doctor-patient communication is poor, according to a study presented Thursday to MedPAC, the Congressional advisory committee on Medicare.
The result is a greater expense for Medicare and a lack of empowerment among patients.
"Once patients understand the risks and benefits of expensive procedures, they tend to opt for more conservative treatment options," said Rita Redberg, a MedPAC member and professor at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine.
It's the reason physicians and hospitals are resisting training programs that would teach care providers to include patients in the decision-making process, Redberg said, because they lose money when patients choose less-costly options.
The deliberations of the 17 MedPAC members will be presented as recommendations to Congress and the Department of Health and Human Services.
Read the full story here: http://bit.ly/1esuEf8
Source: National Journal
Managed Care Reflections: A Q&A With A. Mark Fendrick, MD, and Michael E. Chernew, PhD
December 2nd 2025To mark the 30th anniversary of The American Journal of Managed Care (AJMC), each issue in 2025 includes a special feature: reflections from a thought leader on what has changed—and what has not—over the past 3 decades and what’s next for managed care. The December issue features a conversation with AJMC Co–Editors in Chief A. Mark Fendrick, MD, director of the Center for Value-Based Insurance Design and a professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; and Michael E. Chernew, PhD, the Leonard D. Schaeffer Professor of Health Care Policy and the director of the Healthcare Markets and Regulation Lab at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.
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