Description: In this era of rising health care costs, numerous efforts have been made to link quality and cost through multiple approaches. This is a report of a study, conducted by MPRO under contract with the SOA, in which they evaluate whether quality pays or not in an inpatient setting by carefully selecting a few hospitals in Southeast Michigan and retrospectively calculating their return on investment [ROI] in quality improvement [QI] activities within their organization.

Description: The SOA's health leadership met earlier this year for an all day meeting in New York. A significant portion of that meeting was spent discussing current challenges facing the U.S. health care system and how the SOA can best serve its members by addressing top priority issues. This article from The Actuary outlines four particular issues.

Description: This panel will present the perspectives of state government, federal government, and health maintenance organizations HMOs with respect to Medicaid risk contracting. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 21, No. 4b.

Description: From a session at the Health/Pension Spring Meeting held in New Orleans, Louisiana June 15-17, 2005 Panelists discussed some of the research behind understanding decision-making and how this type of research can be used to enhance the modeling of consumer choice. Discussion of the field of behavioral economics and its potential application in improving assumptions for modeling health care purchasing.

Description: This session summarizes enterprise risk management [ERM], how health insurers are facing scrutiny and learing to apply risk management based on observations in the life insurance industry and how to implement an ERM program. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Volume 30, No. 1, Session 24

Description: This session from the 2003 SOA Orlando Meeting presents various predictive models, evaluation methodologies, control groups, current and potential uses for predictive modeling and issues surrounding implementation of a predictive modeling process. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Volume 29, No. 3.

Description: Panelists discuss their practices and experiences implementing risk measurement and management for various health insurance product lines including disability income, long-term care, medical/managed care and group insurance products. From Record of Society of Actuaries, Vol. 30, No. 1., Session 65

Description: Panelists provide an overview of ERM: what it is, how it has evolved, and possible risks in the insurance industry. From the Record of the Society of Actuaries, Vol. 31, No. 2, Session 102

Description: This article describes seven results from behavioral finance that actuaries may find useful: heuristics, the endowment effect, loss aversion, prospect theory, satisficing, strategic thinking and agent-based modeling.

Description: Introduces the new behavioral finance subgroup and talks about why such a subgroup is needed.