All primary care doctors in Denmark use electronic medical records and 98 percent have the ability to electronically manage patient care—including ordering prescriptions, drafting notes about patient visits, and sending appointment reminders. In addition, almost all medical communication between primary care doctors, specialists, and hospitals is electroni […]

Denmark is one of the world's leading countries in the use of health care technology. Virtually all Danish primary care physicians have electronic medical records with full clinical functionality.

This consensus report lays the groundwork for a measurement framework that evaluates efficiency, and ultimately value, across patient-focused episodes of care. This framework will help key stakeholders move toward a high-performing healthcare system that is patient-centered, focused on quality, mindful of costs, and vigilant against waste.

Massachusetts has successfully demonstrated the Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Project, a program that provides timely telephonic psychiatric and clinical guidance to primary care providers treating children with mental health problems. This study looks into the development and implementation of the project.

This article looks an experimental program in Milwaukee that uses trained parent mentors to help other parents care for their young child's asthma.

Top Democrats say they are resolving disputes over President Barack Obama's health overhaul plan, but they face decisions on subsidizing coverage and are still hunting votes to push the vast package through Congress.

Democratic leaders said Thursday that they were increasingly inclined to release a final health-care bill that could accomplish two of President Obama's top domestic priorities: guaranteeing coverage to 30 million uninsured Americans and vastly expanding federal aid for college students.

House and Senate Democratic leaders struggled Thursday to stitch together pieces of a final health care bill as rank-and-file Democrats demanded more information about the contents of the bill and its cost.

With a final vote drawing near on President Barack Obama's health-care overhaul, Republicans' latest strategy can be neatly summarized: try to scare the daylights out of House Democrats.

Most big employers plan to shift a larger share of health-care costs to their workers next year, according to a survey released Thursday.

Like it or not, more cost control looks likely to flourish in any health plan, Tyler Cowen says.

As the health care drama enters its final act, Alan S. Frumin, the Senate parliamentarian, is in a starring role.

Win or lose on health care, Obama will face a vastly different political landscape after the fate of his plan is decided.

The White House and Congressional leaders put Democrats on notice that they would push ahead next week toward climactic votes on health care legislation.

A deal between United Healthcare and Continuum Health Partners has prevented many New Yorkers from being cut off from their doctors and the hospitals they use.

Me Minus 10 got off to a rocky start two weeks ago: No sooner had I pledged to lose 10 pounds than I got, first, a GI-tract malady and then a wicked head cold (both now resolved). Neither helped me mentally or physically. Nor did learning, upon purchase of a new scale, that I have 12, not 10 poun...

As Republicans work to prevent a health-care bill from reaching President Obama, they are scrambling to exploit divisions between Democrats in the House and the Senate.

Instead of an epidemic of over-treatment, Warner describes an epidemic of under-treatment of children with mental illness.

The emergency department is always noisy, but sudden screams from a staffer still get attention. The triage nurse is yelling, "Not breathing, had vitals at triage and just croaked," as she runs toward us pushing a wheelchair. In it, a pale, thin man is slumped over and looking gray. I'm the atten...

When I was growing up, one of my mother's favorite admonitions -- along with "If you keep making that face, it's going to freeze that way" and "Don't sit too close to the television or you're going to need glasses" -- was the classic "Turn that music down, or you'll go deaf."

President Obama?s demand to delete "special deals" in the health care package would eliminate $500 million in extra Medicaid cash for Massachusetts, but Bay State lawmakers say they are confident the state would recoup that and probably more once negotiations...

State regulators today said that they will likely overhaul the complex formula they use to determine how many Massachusetts residents face a tax penalty for not having health insurance because spiraling costs are making coverage unaffordable for too many people.The...

In just two years, spending on MRIs, mammograms, and other imaging tests climbed by at least $214 million in Massachusetts, helping to fuel a dramatic rise in the cost of outpatient hospital care.A bill that would ban the sale of...

By Carolyn Y. Johnson, Globe Staff Eric S. Lander, founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, is one of three winners of the Albany Medical Center Prize in Biomedical Research, a $500,000 prize awarded this year for...

A group of Massachusetts mayors, fed up with what they say is legislative inaction on skyrocketing municipal health care costs, has launched a ballot initiative for 2012 aimed at giving cities and towns more flexibility in reducing expensive benefits for...

"The 'I' Diet" is a diet book with a difference. Like many other books in the weight-loss genre, it features eating plans, nutritional advice and recipes. But the new paperback -- previously published in 2008 as "The Instinct Diet" and...

Have you been following the strange story of the heroin addicts in Scotland who have been contracting anthrax infections? Two more addicts are being treated, according to a report we picked up on Promed, a clearinghouse for infectious disease news....

Today's decision by a federal court that the preservative thimerosal does not cause autism has sparked a lot of comment in the autism community, most of it negative. Many saw it as a government conspiracy to protect the vaccine industry,...

Anthem Blue Cross of California, the largest health insurance company in California, recently announced plans to increase insurance premiums by as much as 39 percent for people insured in their non-group health insurance plans. This dramatic and unprecedented premium increase has received substantial media attention as well as scrutiny and ire from policymak […]

Democratic proposals to cut Medicare spending are good policy, said New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg, the senior Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, at a Health Affairs Media Breakfast this morning. The problem, according to Gregg, is that Democrats want to use the money saved to fund new benefits under health reform legislation, rather than [...]

Editor’s Note: In addition to Peter Pronovost (photo and biography above), authors of this post include Julius Pham, Assistant Professor, Emergency Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; Sara Singer, Assistant Professor, Harvard School of Public Health,  Department of Health Policy and Management, Massachusetts General Hospital; Jerod Loeb […]

In “Shock Me, Tube Me, Line Me,” a Narrative Matters essay in the February 2010 issue of Health Affairs, emergency physician Boris Veysman sets forth his own version of an advance directive and challenges common perceptions about care at the end of life. An excerpted version of Veysman’s essay appears in today’s Washington Post Health [...]

With apologies to Arthur Miller … President Obama went back before the cameras again Wednesday, providing yet another recycling of fading rationales for his health reform product that more voters would rather leave on the Capitol Hill store shelves than purchase.   But “attention must be paid” whenever the president speaks.  He tried to claim t […]