Policy and Legislation
On Thursday, the American Hospital Association (AHA) and four other hospital systems filed a suit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for refusing to meet its financial obligations for hospital care services provided to certain Medicare patients.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has sent several final Medicare calendar year 2013 payment rules to the White House Office of Management and Budget for final regulatory clearance.
As the federal government evaluates state demonstrations for providing Medicare-Medicaid eligible Americans with better, more cost-effective care, a new study suggests that large savings will be elusive without specialized models and some improvisation.
With concern over primary care shortages not likely to abate any time soon, the debate over using nurse practitioners to fill in the gaps continues. A new policy brief released by Health Affairs last month outlines the issues.
At the same time the government is encouraging healthcare providers, doctors and insurance companies to digitize healthcare information, the landscape for attacking that info is increasing dramatically. One industry insider provides seven tips for how to prevent a data breach.
The House Republican plan to repeal President Barack Obama's health law and turn Medicaid into a block grant program would save the federal government $1.7 trillion from 2013 to 2022, a 38-percent spending reduction, according to a recent report by the Urban Institute for the Kaiser Family Foundation.
A new report finds that the uncertainty caused by a congressional history of last-minute reprieves from Medicare sustainable growth rate (SGR) payment cuts has held back physician practices from participating in new Medicare payment and delivery models.
Amid continued assertions by right-leaning politicians that full implementation of the Affordable Care Act will lead to significant job losses and stymie economic growth, the Urban Institute has released a study using Massachusetts as a model that predicts there will be little net effect to jobs and the overall economy if health reform is fully implemented.
I spent a couple days this week at the annual meeting of the Medical Group Management Association, in San Antonio. As always, the hallway conversations, chats with vendors in and around the trade show booths, and the twitter back channel were among the most interesting parts of the experience.
On Oct. 18, the Massachusetts Medical Society held its State of the State's Health Care 13th Annual Leadership Forum. After the event, MMS president Richard Aghababian, MD, spoke to Healthcare Finance News Editor Rene Letourneau about the biggest challenges and top-of-mind issues facing Massachusetts' physicians.