Quality and Safety

Researchers from global consulting company PwC say providers and insurers have ample opportunities, but also significant challenges in serving the roughly 30 million people who will become newly insured through Medicaid expansion and via the health insurance exchanges in the coming years.

With the increasing costs of a growing Medicare population and of an American population that is living longer but with more chronic disease, the U.S. healthcare system needs to utilize better care coordination and payment reform to keep costs down, according to a report from the American Hospital Association (AHA).

As lawmakers debate the ingredients of a deal to avoid the fiscal cliff, a long-term care membership organization offers a recipe for post-acute system reform that can be adapted for all sectors of healthcare.

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) announced it was granting $40.7 million over three years to fund patient-centered comparative effectiveness research in the first four areas of its National Priorities for Research and Research Agenda.

Many safety-net hospitals that treat a higher number of lower-income patients than other hospitals are worried that the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) will have a disproportionate impact on their reimbursements due to their traditionally higher readmission rates. A new Commonwealth Fund analysis confirms those fears.

The Alliance of Specialty Medicine joined a number of other medical organizations as it called on Congress to permanently fix the flawed sustainable growth rate (SGR) Medicare payment formula as part of any legislation designed to avert the fiscal cliff.

A new tool created by ProPublica supports what nursing home auditors and researchers have been saying for years: federal fines vary widely by state. Nursing homes in some states pay a steep price for misconduct while those in neighboring states don't.

The National Quality Forum announced that Christine Cassel, MD, will become its president and CEO mid-summer 2013 when she leaves her decade-long post as president and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine and the ABIM Foundation. Cassel took a few minutes to talk to Healthcare Finance News about her upcoming role.

A patient-centered care model and the capacity to deliver primary care are more essential for starting an ACO than financial strength, according to a recent study from the Commonwealth Fund.

When patients have access to after-hours services with their primary care provider, emergency room usage is significantly lower and fewer patients go without needed medical care, according to a study by the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC) released last week by Health Affairs.