News

With profligate use of CT and MRI scans widely blamed for increased healthcare spending, a new report shows that pairing automated prior authorization with evidence-based guidelines can ensure such tests are only used when necessary, improving patient safety while reducing medical costs by perhaps 40 percent.

The efforts of a number of hospitals across the country to improve the health of their patient populations by promoting healthy foods are a benefit to the hospitals themselves and their communities.

The Affordable Care Act's medical loss ratio regulation appears to be achieving its goals of reducing insurers' administrative costs and tempering profits.

Three healthcare executives shared the success factors that can propel shared savings and accountable care organizations and the pitfalls that can sink them, even as these value-based models are still in their infancy.

U.S. nonprofit hospitals' financial performance in fiscal year 2012 wasn't strong, and the outlook for FY 2013 doesn't appear to be much better.

One of the first Affordable Care Act policies to take effect, the insurance medical loss ratio, has taken a bite out of profits in individual market businesses, but with less dramatic impacts to group health plans.

While public confusion over the Affordable Care Act continues, according to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey, Americans tend to trust some sources of information more than others -- including clinicians still grappling with the law's ramifications.

Clinical trials are important to the development of new drugs, medical devices and procedures, but budgets for these trials are under increasing pressure.

Nurse practitioners say efforts to expand primary care to millions of Americans under the health law are hampered by insurance industry practices that limit or exclude their participation.

Whether misdiagnosis results in patient harm, wasted resources or malpractice lawsuits, it is a major concern for hospitals.