Coverage Denials in Medicare Advantage-Balancing Access and Efficiency.

This essay compares Medicare Advantage's claim denials and reversals with traditional Medicare and questions whether coverage obligations are being met.

Transforming Specialty Care Delivery and Payment Under Global Budgets-Insights from the Provision of Surgical Services in Maryland.

This Viewpoint discusses Maryland's global budget revenue model, which centrally regulates reimbursement rates for all payers via a hospital-specific, prospectively set cap on total annual revenue across all care sites.

Transforming Public Health Data Systems to Advance the Population's Health.

Policy Points Accurate and reliable data systems are critical for delivering the essential services and foundational capabilities of public health for a 21st -century public health infrastructure. Chronic underfunding, workforce shortages, and operational silos limit the effectiveness of America's public health data systems, with the country's anemic response to COVID-19 highlighting the results of long-standing infrastructure gaps. As the public health sector begins an unprecedented data modernization effort, scholars and policymakers should ensure ongoing reforms are aligned with the five components of an ideal public health data system: outcomes and equity oriented, actionable, interoperable, collaborative, and grounded in a robust public health system.

The Next Generation of Payment Reforms for Population Health - An Actionable Agenda for 2035 Informed by Past Gains and Ongoing Lessons.

Policy Points The predominantly fee-for-service reimbursement architecture of the US health care system contributes to waste and excess spending. While the past decade of payment reforms has galvanized the adoption of alternative payment models and generated moderate savings, uptake of truly population-based payment systems continues to lag, and interventions to date have had limited impact on care quality, outcomes, and health equity. To realize the promise of payment reforms as instruments for delivery system transformation, future policies for health care financing must focus on accelerating the diffusion of value-based payment, leveraging payments to redress inequities, and incentivizing partnerships with cross-sector entities to invest in the upstream drivers of health.

Urbanization and the Future of Population Health.

Policy Points Cities, which are where the majority of the world's population lives today, directly and indirectly shape human health and well-being. Urban health research, policy, and practice are increasingly using a systems science approach to address the upstream and downstream drivers of health in cities, which include social and environmental factors, features of the built environment, conditions of living, and health care resources. To guide future scholarship and policy, we propose an urban health agenda for 2050 focused on revitalizing the sanitation movement, integrating data, scaling best practices, adopting the Health in All Policies approach, and addressing intraurban health inequities.

Comparison of the Financial and Operational Characteristics of For-Profit and Nonprofit Hospitals Receiving Federal Graduate Medical Education Payments, 2011-2020.

This study compares graduate medical education (GME) payments between nonprofit and for-profit hospitals between 2011 and 2020 to assess how hospitals value GME.

Hospital-at-Home: Multistakeholder Considerations for Program Dissemination and Scale.

Policy Points Hospital-at-Home (HaH) is a home-based alternative for acute care that has expanded significantly under COVID-19 regulatory flexibilities. The post-pandemic policy agenda for HaH will require consideration of multistakeholder perspectives, including patient, caregiver, provider, clinical operations, technology, equity, legal, quality, and payer. Key policy challenges include reaching a consensus on program standards, clarifying caregivers' issues, creating sustainable reimbursement mechanisms, and mitigating potential equity concerns. Key policy prescriptions include creating a national surveillance system for quality and safety, clarifying legal standards for care in the home, and deploying payment reforms through value-based models.