Reimbursement
Medicare accountable care organizations are having varying rates of success in addressing their patients' diabetes and heart disease, according to government data released Friday.
In its third year as a Pioneer ACO, Montefiore Care Management has seen a 10 percent reduction in inpatient admissions, a 35 percent reduction in all-cause readmissions and a 45 percent reduction in diabetes inpatient admissions.
While keeping their options open, Medicare regulators are proposing to reduce Medicare Advantage rates by 3.5 percent, along with some other changes that could make the decline even steeper.
Massachusetts' new healthcare transparency agency is arguing that Partners HealthCare's acquisition of a suburban hospital is likely to raise employer and payer costs, setting the stage for state or federal authorities to block the deal.
The executive director at Nevada's health insurance exchange is stepping down amid poor enrollment and website glitches, with the board now mulling a switch to the federal marketplace.
CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield (CareFirst) has pledged to invest more than $1.3 million in four initiatives designed to expand the use of telemedicine to treat patients with behavioral healthcare needs in underserved urban and rural areas of Maryland and Washington, D.C.
3M Health Information Systems will acquire Treo Solutions, which develops healthcare data analytics and business intelligence technology, for an undisclosed sum.
Physicians are notoriously slow to introduce technology into their practices, and yet, some are beginning to adopt the controversial e-currency, bitcoins.
After two other states got a federal OK for the Medicaid "private option," Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett is asking to use a similar version of the policy, with more cost-sharing, plus requirements that have never been approved anywhere before.
We have reached the 10-year anniversary of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), a health insurance option signed into law by President George W. Bush. Although consumer initiatives such as Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs) had been in effect well before this law, industry watchers consider 2004 the unofficial beginning of consumerism in U.S. healthcare.