Quality and Safety
This year’s IHI Forum provided an opportunity to think deeply about the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead in healthcare. Key themes included implications of the Affordable Care Act, including the need to meet capacity and deliver quality care for an ever-growing patient population as well as the need to cut through all the noise in healthcare and focus on the right areas that will facilitate positive changes to our inundated healthcare system.
Bundled payment and payment reform in general are hot topics in healthcare circles, and will prove to be a challenge for many. Jay Sultan, thought leader for payment reform at TriZetto, a healthcare management solutions company, shared with Healthcare Finance News five key ideas for hospital leaders to consider in order to break barriers to successfully implement payment reform at their organizations.
Hospitals and medical practices across the country have continued to increase their privacy and security budgets over the past five years, said a new HIMSS survey released Wednesday. Officials, however, say the percentage of the budget dedicated to these issues is still cause for concern.
As the home care market becomes increasingly competitive, two worker-owned cooperative home care agencies get proactive by becoming the first home care companies in the country to be certified B Corporations.
A new Press Ganey white paper highlights an association between HCAHPS performance -- patient experience scores -- and lower rates of readmission.
More than 350 healthcare, patient, veterans and business organizations on Tuesday urged Congressional leaders to reject any proposal to turn the Medicare Part D plan into one that resembles the rebates structure of Medicaid drug programs.
Consumer-directed health plans with high deductibles typically exempt recommended preventive care such as annual physicals or screening tests from the plan's deductible or require only a small copay as a way to ease financial barriers and encourage patients to seek care. However, many patients don't understand their plan benefits for preventative office care and tend to avoid visits altogether.
As accountable care organizations (ACOs) and pay-for-performance reimbursement models take on greater prominence, the ability to leverage clinical data is emerging as a key tool in reducing costs and improving patient outcomes.
The debate over pay for performance in healthcare gets progressively more interesting, and confusing. And, with Medicare’s recent launch of its value-based purchasing and readmission penalty programs, the debate is no longer theoretical.
An annual list of issues facing physicians doesn't offer any surprises. The Physicians Foundation released today its Physicians Watch List, five issues the nonprofit organization has identified as likely to have the most impact on doctors in 2013.