Capital Finance
The number of veterans receiving VA healthcare and benefits now stands at a record 8.4 million and is projected to hit 8.6 million by 2012, according to VA Secretary Eric Shinseki.
With the federal government’s Recovery Audit Contractor program in full swing, and the changes wrought by healthcare reform promising more audits on the horizon, hospital executives are all but certain that compliance budgets will need to rise in coming years.
Just about everyone agrees that the way we pay for primary care needs fixing. Under the current insurance model, doctors get paid for procedures and tests rather than for time spent with patients, which makes doctors and patients alike unhappy and increases costs.
Supporters of poison control centers say a proposed $27 million reduction in funding, part of a package of cuts announced in February by House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), would close some centers and lead to higher healthcare costs.
Cogent Healthcare and Hospitalists Management Group are merging to form the largest private hospitalist company in the United States. Officials say the merger will bring together two of the strongest companies in the rapidly growing hospitalist industry, with nearly 1,000 affiliated hospitalists and extenders practicing in more than 100 healthcare facilities nationwide.
The Skilled Healthcare Group, a holding company with subsidiary healthcare services companies, has announced that its board of directors has engaged J.P. Morgan Securities to assist the company in exploring strategic alternatives to maximize stockholder value, including a potential sale of the company's real estate assets or the whole company.
Community Health Systems officials say a lawsuit filed by Tenet Healthcare that claims CHS overbilled Medicare by $280 billion from 2006-2009 is 'baseless' and shows Tenet is engaged in a 'scorched earth' defense of CHS' hostile takeover bid launched in early December.
Tenet Healthcare has taken its fight to stave off a hostile takeover bid by Community Health Systems to the next level - filing a lawsuit that alleges the hospital operator improperly bills cases as higher-paying admissions rather than lower-paying outpatient observations.
The Children's Aid Society has acquired a new healthcare facility in the Bronx. The 40,000-square-foot facility is replacing its Bronx Family Center and will double the aid society's capacity for its medical, dental and mental health services programs.
Elsevier/MEDai has announced that AtlantiCare, the largest health system in southeast New Jersey, will implement Orlando, Fla.-based MEDai's Risk Navigator suite of solutions to provide analytics for its Health Engagement program.