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Health & Wellness Information, Physician Locator from WebMD
Read about today’s most current information and news on healthy living and medical issues by visiting WebMD. Find a quality physician near you by using the Physician Locator.

FirstGov’s Comprehensive Site for General Health Information
Stay informed about health issues with this comprehensive site targeted especially for consumers.

Reliable Health Information from Healthfinder
Search this government-backed, one-stop information source for health issues, using the health library, news, lists of organizations, online check-up and more.

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Hospital Quality & Safety Survey Results from the Leapfrog Group
Find out how your hospital ranks in the most recent quality and safety measures recommended by the Leapfrog Group.

California Healthcare Quality Rankings from HealthScope
Searching for quality health care in California? Visit HealthScope, one of the top independent resources for information on doctors, health plans and medical groups.

Physician, Hospital & Nursing Home Ratings from HealthGrades
What grade did your hospital receive? Find out with HealthGrades, the leading independent health care ratings company. More than 125 of the nation’s largest employers and health plans rely on HealthGrades’ ratings and advisory services.

Top 100 Hospitals from Solucient
Did your hospital make the Top 100? Find out by visiting Solucient’s list of Top Hospitals with information on benchmarks for success.

Guide to Choosing Quality Health Care from AHRQ
Find the information you’re looking for using the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality (AHRQ). Search this comprehensive guide for information on choosing health plans, doctors, treatments, hospitals and long-term care providers.

U.S. News & World Report: Best Health Rankings
Find out which hospitals ranked the best nationally for treatments in cancer, geriatrics, psychiatry and many more areas.

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Q-Biz
Using the latest technology, Q-Biz is a leading provider of retirement programs and employment benefit programs to small- to mid-size corporations and public organizations. Find out how Q-Biz can help your company today!

Family 1st Network

Designed for families & individuals without access to employer benefits, Family 1st Network is a resource for individual insurance coverages. Access plan info, get quotes, and apply online for a variety of coverages. Great service is always available online, over the phone, or in person!

Health Plan Report Cards from NCQA HealthChoices
How does your health plan stack up? Find out by viewing report cards issued by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA).

Health Plan Comparison Checklist from CMA
Need help when comparing health plans? Use the California Medical Association’s Health Plan Checklist to compare plans or summarize your current plan.

Family Health Budget Generator
Keep health care costs under control by budgeting ahead. Use Humana’s step-by-step guide to create a family health budget.

New survey shows low level of satisfaction with consumer-directed health plans

Americans enrolled in a relatively new type of health coverage designed to make them more cost-conscious are less satisfied with their health plan than those with comprehensive health insurance and are less likely to recommend the new plans to a friend or colleague, according to a new survey released by the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute and The Commonwealth Fund.

High-deductible health plans of $1,000 or more for individuals and $2,000 or more for families can be combined with tax-preferred savings accounts, such as Health Savings Accounts or health reimbursement arrangements. Employers can contribute money to HRAs and both employers and individuals can contribute to HSAs, which can then be used to pay for health care expenses not covered by the health plans. These consumer-directed health plans frequently have been called the latest big idea in health insurance in the United States. By giving more responsibility for costs to the consumer and theoretically providing cost and quality information about providers, the plans are designed to encourage participants to make informed, cost-conscious decisions about their health care.

The survey also found that those covered by these new plans, both with and without savings accounts, are more likely than those with comprehensive insurance to avoid or delay needed care. When they do get care, those in consumer-directed plans encounter larger financial burdens, compared with those with comprehensive insurance.

But individuals in the new plans do exhibit more cost-conscious behavior in their health care decisions – as the new plans intended – compared with those having comprehensive insurance, the survey found.

A full report on the study can be found at www.ebri.org and www.cmwf.org.

Top Ten Healthcare Trends of 2006, Forecasted by HealthLeaders-InterStudy

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Jan. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- HealthLeaders-InterStudy, a leading provider of managed care industry intelligence, announced its list of the ten most important managed health trends to watch in the coming year.

    1. The year 2006 will mark the biggest change -- and biggest free-for-all
      -- to hit the Medicare program since its inception -- Between 11 and 20
      organizations are offering Medicare Prescription Drug Plans (PDPs) in
      each Medicare-defined region. Nine organizations are offering PDP
      coverage nationwide. In addition to PDPs, seniors face a huge range of
      coverage choices, from Medicare Advantage PPOs and HMOs to private fee-
      for-service plans. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid is heavily
      promoting regional PPOs as a way to extend access to rural areas, but
      local health plans are still drawing the most interest.
   2. Health plan mergers and acquisitions will continue -- In 2005, the
      largest plans, UnitedHealth Group and WellPoint Inc., increased market
      share through purchases of other health plans. Expect to see further
      activity in 2006: CIGNA and Aetna have spare cash, and Coventry Corp.
      seems ready for another acquisition.
   3. Consumer-directed plans generate more media coverage than healthcare
      coverage -- A lot of health plans and financial institutions like the
      new Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and their associated high-deductible
      health plans. However, traditional first-dollar-coverage health plans
      have loosened their restrictions in recent years and remain the first
      choice among consumers. Despite a lot of discussion, this is unlikely
      to change in 2006.
   4. The uninsured remain uninsured -- Employers and government tried a
      variety of innovative ways of getting healthcare coverage to the
      uninsured in 2005. Attempts included "three-share" style plans in which
      government, employers, and employees each kicked in a third of premium,
      and Maine's launch of its Dirigo Health, but both saw poor uptake.
      Small-scale attempts to deal with a large-scale problem are no more
      likely to succeed in 2006.
   5. Medicaid moves back toward managed care -- Texas, Ohio, and Georgia all
      extended their managed care Medicaid programs in 2005, moving large
      numbers of beneficiaries out of fee-for-service. This won't sweep the
      country in 2006, but expect to see several companies, including Aetna,
      extending their management of Medicaid.
   6. Health plans continue their progress on encouraging electronic medical
      records (EMRs), and 2006 could be a break-out year -- Health plans love
      EMRs, which make tracking and quality checking of healthcare easier and
      cheaper, and want providers to love them too. So the upgrading of
      systems will continue, with dramatic initiatives by Kaiser, Blue Cross
      and Blue Shield of Massachusetts, and others.
   7. HMOs decline -- HMOs have been losing market share. A few bastion
      states, like Michigan and Massachusetts, will have high HMO
      participation, but, as employers move more and more to self-insurance,
      HMO market share nationally will continue its decline.
   8. Disease management expands -- Health plans will rely on disease-
      management programs to attempt to control costs, and are beginning to
      see results. The newest programs are in managing complex chronic
      conditions such as hemophilia, scleroderma, and multiple sclerosis.
      Such conditions are relatively rare, but greater oversight of each
      expensive case can show good financial return.
   9. Individual insurance plans with basic benefits increase market share --
      As the cost of health insurance rises for employers of all sizes,
      insurance is becoming more of an individual game. Health plans are
      tapping into this market with basic-benefits plans for recent college
      graduates, early retirees, and people between jobs.
   10. Pay-for-performance shows its hand -- Health plans have been pushing
       pay-for-performance measures on physicians for several years. 2006
       will be a critical year for measuring return on investment now that
       some P4P programs have several years' worth of data to evaluate. Does
       P4P improve physician performance or pay already high-performing
       physicians more for work they would do anyway? Results in 2006 will
       help answer these questions.

ABC's of Healthcare

If you're still mulling over the alphabet soup of health coverage options, here's a quick primer.

HMO (health maintenance organization): A prepaid health plan in which you pay a monthly premium and the HMO covers your cost of care to see doctors within its network at negotiated rates. Co-pays usually apply. You must choose a primary care physician who coordinates all of your care and makes referrals to specialists. If you don't use the doctors, hospitals and clinics in your plan's network, you usually will bear the cost.

PPO (preferred provider organization): A network of health care providers that provide medical services to a health plan's members at discounted costs. PPO members typically make their own decisions about their health care rather than going through a primary care physician.

POS (point-of-service): A type of managed care plan combining features of an HMO and PPO. You can go to a network provider and pay a flat dollar amount or go to an out-of-network provider and pay a deductible and/or a co-insurance charge.

HSA (health savings account): Lets you set aside pretax dollars for future medical, retirement or long-term care expenses. The funds roll over from year to year, and you can take them with you when you change jobs. You must be enrolled in a qualified health plan with high deductibles, which you pay out of your savings

U.S. healthcare tab growing faster than the economy

America's healthcare bill rose to nearly $2 trillion in 2004, or about $6,280 for every man, woman and child, a team of government economists reported today.

Healthcare spending grew faster than the output of the economy, siphoning off a disproportionate share of increasing incomes.

But the 7.9% rate of increase was a little lower than in 2003, the experts said, because some efforts to control prescription-drug costs were succeeding.

"Medical spending continues to rise faster than wages and faster than economic growth, and workers are paying much more in healthcare premiums than just a few years ago," said the report by economists from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, published in the journal Health Affairs.

Although polls show that increasing medical costs and diminishing insurance coverage are leading concerns for voters, it's unlikely that a Congress bitterly divided along partisan lines will succeed in any comprehensive effort to control costs or expand coverage for an estimated 46 million uninsured people.

"What you see is ongoing pressure," said economist Deborah Chollet of Mathematica Policy Research, which conducts technical studies for government and business. "There is an agreement by most observers that the private health system is crumbling."

The report warned: "Continued spending growth will require difficult trade-offs for businesses, households and governments as other spending also rises. These trade-offs are more stringent for those with fewer resources."

As the government's annual accounting of healthcare costs, the report found that spending is growing not only in dollar terms, but as a share of the economy. Healthcare represented 16% of the economic pie in 2004, compared with 13.8% in 1993 and 9.1% in 1980.

For those concerned about costs, prescription spending was a bright spot.

Americans paid $188.5 billion for prescription medications in 2004, about $14 billion more than the year before. But the 8.2% increase was the first time in a decade that drug costs have risen by less than a double-digit percentage.

The drug industry hailed the statistic as evidence that companies were not overcharging. But the report attributed the slower cost increase to a rapid rise in the use of generic drugs and mail-order pharmacies, as well as conversion of allergy and indigestion medications to over-the-counter status and safety fears that have reduced consumption of some painkillers.

Relief from increasing rates of healthcare spending may be only temporary, said John L. Palmer, one of the trustees appointed to oversee Medicare and Social Security finances.

"It's encouraging in the sense that it is a little bit of a slowdown, but we seem to be stuck at a pretty high level of continued increases," said Palmer, who also holds the post of university professor at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

Hospital care accounted for 30% of all healthcare spending, the report found, and physician services 21%. Because hospitals and doctors represent such a big share of the healthcare marketplace, price increases for their services drive most of the overall rise in costs.

Insurance premiums increased by 8.6%, with the cost of family coverage approaching $11,000 a year. Consumers' out-of-pocket spending grew by 5.5%, slower than the overall trend.

Two giant government programs together paid a little less than 40% of the nation's healthcare bill. Medicare, which covers the elderly and disabled, and Medicaid, which covers a broad cross-section of low-income individuals, both grew in 2004, but Medicare spending increased more rapidly.

The report did not take into account the impact of the Medicare prescription-drug benefit, which began this month.

In a separate technical analysis, the government economists concluded that households pay about 32% of all healthcare costs, a bigger share than either employers or federal and state governments. But that calculation involved counting individuals' Medicare taxes as healthcare costs -- something most consumers probably would not think of doing.

Economists say there is no clear limit beyond which continued growth in healthcare spending could endanger the overall economy. But it may become politically untenable to keep putting healthcare ahead of other priorities, such as education, housing and transportation.

"I don't think there's any magic tipping point," Palmer said. "Whether this is sustainable politically is a different question. In all probability, there is going to have to be some political action to address these broader issues. I don't think the political climate is such that we are ready."