Regulation shapes all aspects of America's fragmented health care industry. While the health and lives of patients as well as almost one-sixth of the national economy depend on its effectiveness, health care regulation in America is bewilderingly complex. 'Health Care Regulation in America' is a guide to this regulatory maze.

Regulation shapes all aspects of America's fragmented health care industry, from the flow of dollars to the communication between physicians and patients. It is the engine that translates public policy into action. While the health and lives of patients, as well as almost one-sixth of the national economy depend on its effectiveness, health care regulation in America is bewilderingly complex. Government agencies at the federal, state, and local levels direct portions of the industry, but hundreds of private organizations do so as well. Some of these overseers compete with one another, some conflict, and others collaborate. Their interaction is as important to the provision of health care as are the laws and rules they implement. Health Care Regulation in America is a guide to this regulatory maze. It succinctly recaps the past and present conflicts that have guided the oversight of each industry segment over the past hundred years and explains the structure of regulation today. To make the system comprehensible, this book also presents the sweep of regulatory policy in the context of the interests, values, goals, and issues that guide it. Chapters cover the process of regulation and each key area of regulatory focus - professionals, institutions, financing arrangements, drugs and devices, public health, business relationships, and research. In a uniquely American way, the system thrives on confrontation between competing interests but survives by engendering compromise. Robert Field shows that health care regulation is an inexorable force that nurtures as well as restricts the enterprise of American health care. For the student, practitioner, executive, policy analyst, or concerned citizen, this book is an invaluable guide to the policy, politics, and practice of an industry that directly touches us all.

This volume, developed by the Observatory together with OECD, provides an overall conceptual framework for understanding and applying strategies aimed at improving quality of care. Crucially, it summarizes available evidence on different quality strategies and provides recommendations for their implementation. This book is intended to help policy-makers to understand concepts of quality and to support them to evaluate single strategies and combinations of strategies.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was designed to increase health insurance quality and affordability, lower the uninsured rate by expanding insurance coverage, and reduce the costs of healthcare overall. Along with sweeping change came sweeping criticisms and issues. This book explores the pros and cons of the Affordable Care Act, and explains who benefits from the ACA. Readers will learn how the economy is affected by the ACA, and the impact of the ACA rollout.

"The Nation has lost sight of its public health goals and has allowed the system of public health to fall into 'disarray'," from The Future of Public Health. This startling book contains proposals for ensuring that public health service programs are efficient and effective enough to deal not only with the topics of today, but also with those of tomorrow. In addition, the authors make recommendations for core functions in public health assessment, policy development, and service assurances, and identify the level of government--federal, state, and local--at which these functions would best be handled.

v. 1. Research findings -- v. 2. Concepts and methodology -- v. 3. Implementation issues -- v. 4. Programs, tools and products.

In the wake of publicity and congressional attention to drug safety issues, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requested the Institute of Medicine assess the drug safety system. The committee reported that a lack of clear regulatory authority, chronic underfunding, organizational problems, and a scarcity of post-approval data about drugs' risks and benefits have hampered the FDA's ability to evaluate and address the safety of prescription drugs after they have reached the market. Noting that resources and therefore efforts to monitor medications' riskâ€"benefit profiles taper off after approval, The Future of Drug Safety offers a broad set of recommendations to ensure that consideration of safety extends from before product approval through the entire time the product is marketed and used.