Healthcare Finance Staff

With the nation on the edge of its seat June 28, the Supreme Court ruled it constitutional for all Americans to obtain health insurance or face penalties. And with the remaining sections of the ACA staying in place, healthcare reform was deemed to be in full swing, resulting in another victory for the Obama administration.

So the Supreme Court ruling -- finally -- has been handed down and the verdict is out: Chief Justice Roberts' hand pulled the ACA to shore.

The Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT) believes a private-public partnership would be better to run the future Nationwide Health Information Network (NwHIN), rather than a federal body alone.

Florida Health Choices, a corporation established by the state to improve access to care, has selected Xerox to administer its insurance marketplace.

The Kentucky Health Information Exchange, St. Elizabeth Healthcare and Healthbridge are successfully sharing patient information. The partnership, says Trudi Matthews, director of policy and public relations for HealthBridge, is just the "tip of the iceberg" in terms of connecting healthcare providers and sharing patient information in Kentucky and healthcare markets in bordering states.

Kaiser Permanente and the Social Security Administration on Monday announced a pilot program to exchange electronic health record information using the Nationwide Health Information Network (NwHIN).

Payer performance improvement remained flat in 2011, according to the seventh annual PayerView rankings released today by health IT company athenahealth.

  Do you know what you do best? Traditionally, that's a question many healthcare providers may not ever have bothered to ask themselves.  That's because under the fee-for-service model which has shaped healthcare in this country for years, providers really haven't needed to know which parts of their practices were the most efficient or resulted in the highest health outcomes. Just so long as they were compensated for the services they provided.

  Healthcare providers are being told they need to change the way they deliver their services, and payers are being told they need to change the way they reimburse providers. One way to help bridge the divide is for payers to develop effective strategies and programs to deliver value-based reimbursement programs.  

  Payers who want to affect the change needed to revamp the healthcare delivery system will need to forge closer relationships with providers, be engaged more with members to help them manage their health, and create better alignment with the government said three health plan executives Thursday at AHIP Institute 2012 in Salt Lake City.