Making the Health Insurance Flexibility and Accountability (HIFA) Waiver Work through Collaborative Governance

This paper argues that collaborative governance should be an essential component in any HIFA waiver proposal, due to the fact that the health care system is moving away from a federal and hierarchical program design and implementation towards a more local, collaborative approach. As several current collaborative projects demonstrate, collaboration may overcome barriers to health expansion program success, such as stakeholder buy-in, notice, and state access to private health coverage information. Furthermore, collaboration within the context of the HIFA waiver process may maximize the strengths of current collaborations, such as providing: (a) access to greater and more stable funding sources; (b) access to a facilitator that can collect and distribute data; and (c) an avenue for accountability. Multiple challenges in ensuring collaborative governance are reviewed. Ms. Zabawa argues that these challenges are not insurmountable if states adopt a truly collaborative approach to designing and implementing programs under the HIFA waiver; there may be hope in expanding and improving health coverage, since collaboration is the most appropriate mechanism to address the complexity of health system reform

Media - popular culture - politics: interactions and new phenomena

Praca recenzowana / peer-reviewed pape

Advance Care Planning is Critical to Overall Wellbeing

Wellness is growing market in the United States. McKinsey and Company estimates the spend on wellness products and services to exceed $450 billion in the United States and to grow at more than five percent annually.1 Despite this impressive growth, wellness products and services are falling short of meeting many consumers’ wellness needs.2 Those who feel least satisfied with what wellness has to offer yearn for a more holistic approach to wellness, with a need for more products and services that address sleep and mindfulness concerns.3 Arguably at the heart of these more holistic approaches, particularly those that can improve sleep and mental wellbeing, is factoring into wellbeing an individual’s relationships, culture, physical environment, and socioeconomic conditions. After all, if a person is living in an abusive relationship, a dangerous neighborhood, facing discrimination, or breathing toxic air, then no amount of individual behavior change will achieve full wellbeing for that person. In healthcare parlance, these factors are labeled “Social Determinants of Health” or SDOH. This article aims to promote incorporating Advance Care Planning (ACP) into health promotion work. ACP can serve as a tool and framework to engage in broader discussions about an individual’s social and structural drivers of health. By looking beyond individual behavior and starting the ACP discussion, health promotion professionals can tackle SDOH thereby making health promotion efforts more effective

Transformations in Health Law Practice: The Intersections of Changes in Healthcare and Legal Workplaces

The passage and implementation of the Affordable Care Act is propelling transformations in health care. The transformations include integration of clinics and hospitals, value based care, patient centeredness, transparency, computerized business models and universal coverage. These shifts are influencing the practice of health law, a vibrant specialty field considered a hot area for new lawyers. The paper examines how the transformations in health care are intersecting with ongoing trends in law practice: increase in in-house positions, collaboration between medical and legal professionals, and the continued search for increased access to legal representation for ordinary people. Three health law workplace sites are discussed: in house offices, corporate law firms and medical legal partnerships. The analysis shows that these practices are adapting to the health care context by locating new clients, increased collaboration with clients and medical providers, developing business strategies and linking with other legal service providers. The lawyers are reconstructing professional identities as they create these practices, using their expertise and working as collaborators. Organizations of similar practitioners support the development of these identities. The paper discusses the three arenas where lawyers can learn the necessary competencies for these transformations in health law: law schools, inter-professional education and communities of practice

Panel 3: ACOs in Practice: Research on Current Implementation of ACOs

Lessons from the Wisconsin ACO Study State-Based ACO and Medical Home Pilots: Early Lessons from the Other Washington Lessons from ACO Implementation in New Jersey Accountable Care Organizations: A New Thing with Some Old Problem

Panel 3: ACOs in Practice: Research on Current Implementation of ACOs

Lessons from the Wisconsin ACO Study State-Based ACO and Medical Home Pilots: Early Lessons from the Other Washington Lessons from ACO Implementation in New Jersey Accountable Care Organizations: A New Thing with Some Old Problem