Purva Rawal

The COVID-19 era poses new challenges for vaccine access that must be met with creative policy solutions and partnerships that leverage community-based assets. To ensure timely and equitable access to vaccines essential to preventing and containing old and new infectious disease outbreaks, the health care delivery system must reconfigure resources and make additional investments. This blog post describes three existing community-based sites that policy makers and stakeholders should build on… Show more

The COVID-19 era poses new challenges for vaccine access that must be met with creative policy solutions and partnerships that leverage community-based assets. To ensure timely and equitable access to vaccines essential to preventing and containing old and new infectious disease outbreaks, the health care delivery system must reconfigure resources and make additional investments. This blog post describes three existing community-based sites that policy makers and stakeholders should build on through additional support and partnership:

- Mobile health clinics (MHCs),
- Drive-thru testing and immunization sites, and
- School-based health centers (SBHCs).
States and cities face pressure to find solutions in light of evolving needs and guidelines for pandemic control. Policy makers and stakeholders should devise plans to make maximum use of community-based sites to meet the dual challenges of ensuring children and adults are up to date on vaccines recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and that they also have access to a future COVID-19 vaccine. Show less

American healthcare is at a crossroads. The Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) passage in 2010 ushered in numerous changes to our health care system. While we are still understanding its impacts, Congress is pushing forward with an effort to repeal key parts of the law. The Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) assessment of the House passed repeal and replace legislation estimated at leaving 23 million more Americans uninsured, and Medicaid funding would be reduced by $834 billion over the next decade.… Show more

American healthcare is at a crossroads. The Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) passage in 2010 ushered in numerous changes to our health care system. While we are still understanding its impacts, Congress is pushing forward with an effort to repeal key parts of the law. The Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) assessment of the House passed repeal and replace legislation estimated at leaving 23 million more Americans uninsured, and Medicaid funding would be reduced by $834 billion over the next decade. Despite a growing body of evidence on the ACA’s successes and areas where improvements are possible, the debate over our health care system seems mired in politics instead of progress forward. Show less

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) has dramatically changed the health care landscape, creating new opportunities to advance health promotion, prevention, and treatment for children, parents, and families. However, the programmatic and funding landscape for children’s behavioral health following implementation of the ACA largely remains siloed, as policy makers and industry stakeholders are focused broadly on the uninsured and reforming payment and delivery systems.

To… Show more

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) has dramatically changed the health care landscape, creating new opportunities to advance health promotion, prevention, and treatment for children, parents, and families. However, the programmatic and funding landscape for children’s behavioral health following implementation of the ACA largely remains siloed, as policy makers and industry stakeholders are focused broadly on the uninsured and reforming payment and delivery systems.

To see how the ACA has impacted children’s behavioral health, we explored several programs in both governmental and nongovernmental organizations from various vantage points of the health care system. We were able to identify areas where further programmatic or funding support was necessary to advance children’s cognitive and behavioral health, and from this scan, three key themes emerged:

The ACA’s Coverage Expansion: The coverage expansion potentially increases access to behavioral health care for adults and children, but the impact has been hard to assess.
Movement to Value-Based Payment: Health reform catalyzed the movement to value-based payment, which can be built on to advance children’s behavioral health, including in the context of prevention.
Population Health: Payers and providers are deploying population health strategies to promote prevention in support of population health and to manage high-cost, high-need subpopulations, making behavioral health a logical focus for these efforts.
This paper explores the impact of these three themes on children’s development, behavioral health, including in the context of prevention, and ends each section on the themes with key takeaways and insights. The paper then concludes with a synthesis and review of high-level opportunities for the children’s behavioral health community to engage with stakeholders to advance child and family health and development. Show less

This is one of the first books to provide a detailed assessment of the Affordable Care Act, explaining the realities and myths surrounding the passage and implementation of one of the most divisive political struggles in recent U.S. history.
• Uses nonpartisan sources of information that include studies and reports to assess the claims, beliefs, and assumptions about Obamacare
• Draws from credible research sources―such as the Center for Disease Control and the Government Accounting… Show more

This is one of the first books to provide a detailed assessment of the Affordable Care Act, explaining the realities and myths surrounding the passage and implementation of one of the most divisive political struggles in recent U.S. history.
• Uses nonpartisan sources of information that include studies and reports to assess the claims, beliefs, and assumptions about Obamacare
• Draws from credible research sources―such as the Center for Disease Control and the Government Accounting Office―to question or uphold beliefs
• Provides an evidence-based examination of dozens of the most prominent claims about the Affordable Care Act

Show less

The problem is straightforward: telehealth adoption has lagged behind its promise due to regulatory and payment barriers that haven’t caught up to new technologies and payment methods.Telehealth is an important tool that can be used to educate patients, facilitate patient-provider communication, and engage patients more fully in their care outside of the doctor’s office. It encompasses a broad range of activities, such as videoconferencing, remote patient monitoring, streaming media, and… Show more

The problem is straightforward: telehealth adoption has lagged behind its promise due to regulatory and payment barriers that haven’t caught up to new technologies and payment methods.Telehealth is an important tool that can be used to educate patients, facilitate patient-provider communication, and engage patients more fully in their care outside of the doctor’s office. It encompasses a broad range of activities, such as videoconferencing, remote patient monitoring, streaming media, and terrestrial and wireless communications. In short, telehealth aims to provide a way to receive care no matter where the patient is. As a result, it has significant potential to be an important tool for providers trying to coordinate care across settings. Show less

Do safety net hospitals categorically under perform the national average in terms of managing readmissions? Or is something else triggering higher rates of readmissions in these facilities? These questions are essential for policymakers to answer as pay-for-performance (P4P) penalties are having a disparate impact on hospitals that serve low-income areas.

Rhetoric from both the Republican and Democratic candidates reflects divided feelings over the ACA – leaving too little room to assess and continue to improve healthcare today. Republicans frequently call for repealing and replacing the law (although it is unclear with what), while some Democrats are promoting a single payer system. Neither approach acknowledges the reality of how the ACA is changing the healthcare landscape and how to realistically tackle the challenges that lay ahead.