Quality and Safety
In the last few years, it's become increasingly important for healthcare organizations to create some sort of strategy that is focused on becoming a successful social business, according to Andrew Dixon, senior vice president of marketing and operations at Igloo Software.
A total of $280 million in hospital readmissions penalties will be paid by 2,213 hospitals this year as a result of the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program administered by CMS. Healthcare organizations have two options for reduction of readmissions rates.
In the first year of new medical loss ratio (MLR) requirements, insurers spent less than 1 percent of premium revenue on rebates or quality improvements, according to an analysis by the Commonwealth Fund.
As the investigation into a fatal outbreak of fungal meningitis continues, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration proposed Friday that the agency gain new authority to regulate pharmacy compounding, including charging fees to fund an expanded safety framework.
The payment of higher Medicare rates to physicians and hospitals in regions that have good health outcomes and lower costs, while reducing payment rates where there is lesser quality and higher costs will not drive individual providers to deliver care more efficiently reports the Institute of Medicine (IOM).
Healthcare is part of the service industry and increased competition amongst providers should lead to cost stabilization and advancements in healthcare services. Unfortunately, multiple barriers limit the healthcare industry from behaving like other service industries.
Cancer drug shortages are forcing treatment changes and delays that for some patients have led to worse outcomes, more therapy-related complications and higher costs, according to a national survey of health professionals published Thursday.
When Premier healthcare alliance officials announced this week that their data-sharing collaborative saved 92,000 lives and $9.1 billion since 2008, the emphasis was on the data, but in a briefing Wednesday about the private sector's role in Medicare Susan DeVore, Premier president and CEO, explained that one of major drivers behind the collaborative's success was the culture change that took place among the healthcare providers.
In a study published online Wednesday in JAMA Surgery, researchers calculated that during 2009, six technologically advanced and minimally-invasive surgical procedures contributed a cost savings and workplace value of more than $11 billion.
A recent survey of physicians in the U.S. by consulting company Deloitte shows that most are worried that the future of the medical profession may be in jeopardy and that the overall performance of the healthcare system in this country is "suboptimal."