News
Steven Brill’s Time article, “Bitter Pill” sent a shock wave through the healthcare industry and prompted a response from the American Hospital Association to correct a series of mis-statements and financial assumptions.
Like it or not, a new healthcare landscape is taking shape that runs counter to just about every convention the industry has ever known.
A recent study by a Harvard professor and her European colleagues has elicited a handful of insights about health exchanges similar to the ones that will be implemented in 2014 in the United States.
Health insurer Priority Health has announced it has contracted with Healthcare Blue Book to publish cost and quality information for more than 300 procedures by facility and physician for its insurance members in Michigan.
Healthcare sector merger and acquisition (M&A) activity is expected to increase in 2013 compared to last year, but will likely be smaller-sized deals as health systems continue to consolidate and bulk up to prepare for health reform.
It may not be quite at epidemic levels, but merger mania has definitely taken hold in the healthcare field, and most certainly in New England.
One of the latest examples is the proposed partnership of Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, the Lahey Clinic of Burlington, Mass., and Atrius Health, a Newton, Mass.-based consortium of Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates. Atrius Health is the largest physician organization in Massachusetts, with 1,000 physician members.
Ease of transition to ICD-10 by October 2014 and improved front-end transactions are high on the checklist for providers who are looking for ways to improve their revenue cycle management (RCM) process, according to experts. One way to tackle this is to have a well-rounded technology suite, they say, and vendors are stepping up to fill that role.
Evan Schwartz, founding partner of New York-based law firm Quadrino Schwartz, said his organization used to see the occasional case of private insurers retrospectively auditing health care providers – they only litigated about 10 or so each year.
A recent report by Frost & Sullivan found that the market for revenue cycle management applications and services will grow 61 percent between 2012 and 2017 ($1.9 billion to $3.07 billion), as hospitals upgrade platforms to address coming cuts in Medicare and Medicaid payments under the Affordable Care Act.
Revenue cycle integrity is critical to financial performance and will be even more so with accountable care organizations, bundled payments and other changes coming with healthcare reform.