Research by Author & Topic

Publications by Barbara A. Ormond on Hospitals and Physicians

The uninsurance rate in the District is lower than the national average, but an unacceptably high number of residents remain uncovered. To help assess ways to improve coverage, the DC Department of Health convened the Health Care Coverage Advisory Panel under the District's State Planning Grant (SPG). This final report of the Panel, staffed by the authors, makes eight recommendations, including better outreach and enrollment in Medicaid and other existing public programs, allowing uninsured residents to buy in to such programs, better information on private options, and ongoing monitoring of coverage accomplishments and prevailing insurance market conditions.

[Washington Post] After months of wrangling, a decision has been made: D.C. General Hospital will close. Its replacement, a private health care network of local clinics and hospitals led by Greater Southeast Hospital, promises to improve care while containing costs.

Institute researcher Barbara Ormond discusses the crisis facing emergenct room care in many urban areas—with Dr. Charles Cutler, chief medical officer for the American Association of Health Plans, Dr. Mohammad Akhter, executive director of the American Public Health Association, and Dr. Michelle Grant Ervin, chair of the department of emergency medicine at Howard University Hospital. Hosted by Kojo Nnamdi.

Urban Institute researchers, Randall Bovbjerg and Barbara Ormond, testify before the DC City Council, Committee on Human Services on the changing hospital sector in Washington, D.C. and what implications such changes have for the poor.

The Washington, D.C. hospital sector has an excess of hospital beds and a concentration of services at the high end. Four community hospitals; three academic medical centers; a large, nonacademic tertiary care hospital; five specialty hospitals; and a public general hospital all compete to serve a city with a population of only 500,000. In addition, there are two military facilities. Forty percent of patients in this market are drawn from the adjacent Maryland and Virginia suburbs. The market is poised for change, driven by insurance market trends.