Fact File

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will affect the volume of outpatient procedures in all ambulatory care settings. With respect to Medicaid, not all states have opted in to that expansion under PPACA, but according to a Truven Health Analytics™ forecast, if all states do opt in to the expansion of Medicaid, the number of projected outpatient procedures (all payers) would be about 101 billion over the next 10 years, about 2 billion more than the number projected under the current environment (which accounts for states that have opted in or out). In this report, we'll examine the implications for six states: Florida and Texas, which have opted out; and California, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Michigan, which have opted in.

The Truven Health Analytics 50 Top Cardiovascular Hospitals study identifies hospitals that achieve the best results on the scorecard of performance measures. For 2014, based on comparisons between the study winners and a peer group of similar high-volume hospitals that were not winners, the study found that if all cardiovascular providers performed at the level of the winners, more than 8,600 additional patients could survive, $1 billion could be saved, and 3,200 additional bypass and angioplasty patients could be complication-free. This analysis is based on the Medicare patients included in this study. If the same standards were applied to all inpatients, the impact would be even greater.

Cancer patients may have a different point of view on oncology drug decisions than nonpatients, according to a survey conducted by Truven Health Analytics. Healthcare consumers were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with a recent decision by a large cancer center to not offer a new medication that has similar ben­efits and side effects as an existing drug but is more costly. The fact that those who have had the most experience with cancer were the most likely to agree with the can­cer center's decision suggests that those who have experienced both the benefits and side effects of cancer drugs, and possibly out-of-pocket costs for these medications, may have more realistic attitudes toward cancer treatments.