Reimbursement
New research from the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) shows that employees enrolled in a Consumer Directed Health Plan (CDHP) are more likely than members of traditional health plans to exhibit cost-conscious behaviors including doing additional research on healthcare costs.
In the 166 pages of health insurance exchange rules published by the Department of Health and Human Services last March, one provision came as a pleasant surprise to some private HIX firms -- section 155.220, letting public exchanges contract with "web-based entities" to market and sell qualified health plans.
Medicare on Dec. 20 disclosed bonuses and penalties for nearly 3,000 hospitals as it ties almost $1 billion in payments to the quality of care provided to patients.
Kroll Advisory Solutions has released its 2013 Cyber Security Forecast, spotlighting some of the pressing and perhaps unexpected privacy and security issues healthcare and other organizations may be grappling with in the coming year.
Hospital readmissions are costly and often preventable events. Yet intense efforts to decrease readmissions rates and avoid penalties under the 2010 federal healthcare reform law have yet to have a significant impact, as one in five hospitalized Medicare beneficiaries are still being readmitted within 30 days of discharge.
After three terms in Congress and a primary loss last spring, Pennsylvania Congressman Jason Altmire is heading to Florida Blue as senior VP for government affairs, leaving one of the most fractious institutions in the country for one of the most tumultuous industries.
The Department of Health and Human Services has awarded the consumer oriented and operated plan (CO-OP) in Illinois, the Metropolitan Chicago Healthcare Council, with a $160 million loan to run the Land of Lincoln Health CO-OP.
A spokesman for Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback told the Legislature's Joint Committee on Health Policy Oversight that it will develop its own estimate of the cost of expanding Medicaid, before the state commits to the expansion as spelled out in the Affordable Care Act.
Insurer Florida Blue and the Moffitt Cancer Center on Thursday announced the creation of an accountable care program that will focus on the treatment of cancer.
When analyst house IDC's Health Insights unit shared its top 10 predictions for 2013, atop the list was that "health reform status quo would persist for the next four years."