News
The Massachusetts Legislature passed the next phase of its ongoing attempt to reform the healthcare system: sweeping cost control legislation. Gov. Deval Patrick, a Democrat, hailed the lawmakers' work saying, "This is more than a good bill, a great bill."
When the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid announced a one-year delay for ICD-10 implementation in February 2012 – pushing the date back to Oct. 1, 2014 – some industry groups cheered, others jeered. What did CFOs do? The smart ones kept their focus and pushed forward with their implementation plans and schedules.
In late July the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced an unprecedented partnership between the federal government, state officials, private health insurer organizations and a number of other anti-fraud groups focused on preventing healthcare fraud.
Just over a decade ago, members of Arkansas Children's Hospital's management decided to go to Disney World. It wasn't a fun-and-games trip, although fun was had. They went to learn about developing a culture that would support everyone working at the hospital and everyone using hospital services. Arkansas Children's was ahead of trend recently taking hold in the healthcare industry: valuing customer service.
A U.S. Census report released this week showed that the ranks of uninsured shrank for the first time since 2007 dropping to 15.7 percent of the population compared with 16.3 percent in 2010 and a separate report showed average insurance rates increased only 4 percent in 2012.
According to a new study published in the journal Critical Care Medicine, in the hours leading up to a serious complication, physicians and nurses may overestimate the quality of care given to their hospital patients.
A report funded by the American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association and the American Nurses Association predicts that the 2 percent cuts to Medicare providers included in the "budget sequester" beginning in January will result in the loss of about 496,000 jobs during the first year of the automatic cuts.
About 47 percent of California voters older than 40 surveyed in a poll say a close family member will need long-term care within the next five years, and about as many say they couldn't afford even one month of nursing home costs, the SCAN Foundation and the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research have found.
Filling nursing shifts at the last minute is a nearly constant battle for many unit managers. Some industry experts say automated workforce management tools can offer significant relief for this time-intensive challenge; others say the use of these tools should not be viewed as a best practice.
As director of the HIT Initiatives Group in the Office of E-health Standards and Services at CMS, Elizabeth Holland is intricately involved in shaping the meaningful use rules that some view as having the potential to transform healthcare. Holland is a veteran policymaker. She joined CMS in 1991. It was when the proposed rule for the Medicare fee schedule was in the works. CMS received 100,000 comments – all on paper.