Taylor J. Christensen, MD

Taylor J. Christensen is an internal medicine physician and health policy researcher. He blogs at Clear Thinking on Healthcare.

Is this your author page?

Make it work for you. Your KevinMD author page is one of the highest-ranking results for your name. An enhanced author page turns this page into a premium profile with your photo, biography, affiliations, publications, and links, publishes your accepted articles in 1 to 3 days, includes a listing in Experts by KevinMD, and comes with a guaranteed interview on The Podcast by KevinMD. See an example · See the enhanced author page → Cancel anytime.

Latest articles

Health policy

Pay for performance and shared savings are good, but they’re not the solution

Taylor J. Christensen, MD

January 9, 2025Jan 9, 20255

Think about every health care reform effort we've been working on for the last decade or two, including accountable care organizations (ACOs) and the value-based purchasing models from CMS. The vast majority of them use one or both of the…

Think about every health care reform effort we’ve been working on for the last decade or two, including accountable care organizations (ACOs) and the value-based purchasing models from CMS. The vast majority of them use one or both of the following strategies in an attempt to financially reward providers for delivering higher value (it’s like they’ve realized that financial incentives need to be fixed!):

Quality bonuses: For providers who deliver

…

Health policy

A real-life example of irrational health care spending

Taylor J. Christensen, MD

January 17, 2021Jan 17, 202117

This week at work, I had a patient in the hospital who had been through a pretty challenging illness, and he was going to have to be discharged to a skilled nursing facility (SNF) to rehab for a few weeks. Sadly, SNFs in my area do not currently allow any visitors due to the pandemic. The patient is very close to his daughter, who lives out of state, and she …

Health policy

Our optimal future U.S. health care system

Taylor J. Christensen, MD

December 17, 2019Dec 17, 20193

Next in a series. The Healthcare Incentives Framework helps show how to fix incentives in health care systems. It starts by enumerating the five jobs we expect a health care system to do for us and then identifies which parties…

Next in a series.

The Healthcare Incentives Framework helps show how to fix incentives in health care systems. It starts by enumerating the five jobs we expect a health care system to do for us and then identifies which parties in the health care system (providers or insurers) have a natural incentive to fulfill each of those jobs. Those incentives arise naturally, but the big challenge is shaping …

Health policy

What would an optimal government-run health care system look like?

Taylor J. Christensen, MD

December 5, 2019Dec 5, 2019

Next in a series.

Health policy

What would an optimal single-payer health care system look like?

Taylor J. Christensen, MD

November 29, 2019Nov 29, 20195

Next in a series.

Health policy

What would an optimal libertarian health care system look like?

Taylor J. Christensen, MD

November 21, 2019Nov 21, 2019

Next in a series. In prior posts, I described my Healthcare Incentives Framework. If you haven’t read those, I recommend you check them out first to have the full context for this post. But here’s a refresher of the main…

Next in a series.

In prior posts, I described my Healthcare Incentives Framework. If you haven’t read those, I recommend you check them out first to have the full context for this post. But here’s a refresher of the main points of the framework without re-explaining all the rationale:

The Healthcare Incentives Framework helps show how to fix incentives in health care systems. It starts by enumerating

…

Health policy

The barriers to patients choosing higher-value providers and insurers

Taylor J. Christensen, MD

November 10, 2019Nov 10, 20196

Next in a series. I have developed a framework, which I call the Healthcare Incentives Framework, that helps me understand health care systems. It outlines the jobs we expect a health care system to do for us and identifies which…

Next in a series.

I have developed a framework, which I call the Healthcare Incentives Framework, that helps me understand health care systems. It outlines the jobs we expect a health care system to do for us and identifies which parties in the health care system have the primary incentive to fulfill each of those jobs. This is helpful because, if we are unsatisfied with how …

Health policy

How to structure financial incentives in our health care system

Taylor J. Christensen, MD

November 2, 2019Nov 2, 2019

Next in a series. In my previous post, I explained the basics of my Healthcare Incentives Framework, which enumerates the jobs we want a health care system to do for us and links them to the parties in the health…

Next in a series.

In my previous post, I explained the basics of my Healthcare Incentives Framework, which enumerates the jobs we want a health care system to do for us and links them to the parties in the health care system that have the greatest incentive to fulfill those jobs. If you haven’t read that post, I recommend you read it first. For those …

Health policy

A framework for understanding health care systems

Taylor J. Christensen, MD

October 25, 2019Oct 25, 2019

First in a series. Way back as a business strategy undergrad and then as a medical student, I developed a framework for understanding health care systems. I call it the Healthcare Incentives Framework, and I believe it clarifies the big-picture…

First in a series.

Way back as a business strategy undergrad and then as a medical student, I developed a framework for understanding health care systems. I call it the Healthcare Incentives Framework, and I believe it clarifies the big-picture components of health care systems that people need to grasp to be able to understand the sources of problems, which then leads to appropriate solutions. The whole thing cannot be explained …

Health policy

What this medical student learned from doing a rotation in Thailand

Taylor J. Christensen, MD

June 13, 2016Jun 13, 20167

As an American medical student doing an elective in Thailand, I was initially troubled when I saw how Thai patients were treated. I'm not speaking of the way Thai physicians apply medical science, mind you -- they rely on UpToDate…

As an American medical student doing an elective in Thailand, I was initially troubled when I saw how Thai patients were treated. I’m not speaking of the way Thai physicians apply medical science, mind you — they rely on UpToDate and sundry U.S. guidelines just as we do — but that was mostly where the similarities ended.

Morning rounds with the team of residents (sans attending, but apparently there was one …

Health policy

Is our system built upon a flawed foundation of fee for service?

Taylor J. Christensen, MD

January 17, 2013Jan 17, 20138

When someone is arguing that our health system needs an overhaul, one of the most common reasons they cite is because it is "built on a flawed foundation of fee for service." Of course we blame fee-for-service reimbursement for the…

When someone is arguing that our health system needs an overhaul, one of the most common reasons they cite is because it is “built on a flawed foundation of fee for service.” Of course we blame fee-for-service reimbursement for the rampant overtesting, overtreating, and fragmentation (among other things) in our health system, but this doesn’t mean that it is inherently bad, and here’s why.

First, a little contextualization will help. Fee …

Health policy

A medical student meets Donald Berwick

Taylor J. Christensen, MD

December 16, 2011Dec 16, 2011

While attending the Institute for Healthcare Improvement Annual Forum recently, my friend, Jared Conley, and I had the good fortune of finding ourselves standing a table away from Don Berwick in a relatively empty conference room. As MD/PhD in Health Policy students, we were interested in asking him a question about ACOs, so we approached him and introduced ourselves, hastily adding, “We know you’re busy, so we just have …

Read more…

A medical student meets Donald Berwick