My go-to sites for information on healthcare quality and payment

Dec. 2, 2016 / By Kristine Daynes

Two years ago, I blogged about my favorite websites for information on population health. Since then my inbox has become crowded with e-newsletters and alerts. Recently I found myself unsubscribing from sources I once considered invaluable. There are a handful of senders and sources I kept, because they publish content that is thoughtful, original and useful. They don’t just report what everyone else is saying.

Here is my updated list of favorite online sources to keep pace with healthcare payment, policies, market disruptions and innovations in value-based care. They are listed in alphabetical order.

American Journal of Managed Care – AJMC is a peer-reviewed publication for clinicians and other healthcare professionals serving managed care populations. It sits at the intersection of payment, policy, and clinical practice. You can subscribe for free to the journal and its newsletters. The website has a video channel with short interviews from AJMC-sponsored conferences.

Health Affairs – The Health Affairs Journal is another good source of information from credentialed authors. I prefer the blog because many important health researchers and policymakers post as guest bloggers when they have something important to say.

Kaiser Family Foundation – My family loves the YouToons cartoon about health insurance. The content on the KFF site is consumer-friendly without being fluffy. I go to this site when I want to understand how healthcare policies and trends are affecting real people.

Kaiser Health News – When I am looking for news about state or national policies, and an explanation of their significance, I can usually find it through Kaiser Health News. The site produces its own editorial content and syndicates it to news outlets. Smart, reliable and relevant.

Levitt Partners – The Leavitt team posts original content on their blog, including summaries of their surveys. They are one of the most reliable organizations for information about private and Medicaid ACOs. They also assemble a weekly report, sifting through a lot of news sources to assemble information on ACOs, insurance exchanges, Medicaid expansion and Medicaid managed care. You can subscribe for free.

The Commonwealth Fund – This site often reads like a snobbish British critic reviewing a bad American film. That’s part of its value. It provides an international perspective on healthcare policy, focusing on access, efficiency and quality of care to disadvantaged people.

There are many online news publications, too. I try to avoid those that function as news aggregators with very little original content. I can get the same information by setting up Google Alerts to send me what I want. The two online news outlets I favor are Modern Healthcare (for the newsletter and alerts) and Becker’s Hospital Review (for the daily top news stories).

Let me know if you have other favorite websites or publication and why you like them. Happy reading!

Kristine Daynes is senior marketing manager for payer and regulatory markets at 3M Health Information Systems.