Reimbursement
A 25-bed critical access hospital in northern Iowa has implemented a program offering below-market interest rate loans to help patients cover self-pay hospital expenses.
In a move designed to speed adoption of electronic health records in rural hospitals, UnitedHealth Group recently announced it will invest $10 million in California's Critical Access Hospitals to help them beef up their IT systems and infrastructure.
In a deal that will add comprehensive government program patient eligibility and enrollment services to its existing revenue cycle management suite, Emdeon has announced it will acquire Atlanta-based Chamberlin Edmonds & Associates, which serves more than 200 acute care facilities in 30 states.
The latest Kaiser Family Foundation poll, conducted in August, shows public support for health care reform falling. After two monthly polls in which reform was viewed increasingly favorably, the new poll shows a sharp decline in public backing for the new law.
CarePayment Technologies, Inc., a healthcare financial services company in Portland, Ore., has acquired San Francisco-based Vitality Financial, which provides hospital payment solutions to providers and patients.
About 16.6 million small business employees work in firms that will be eligible for tax credits designed to offset health insurance premium costs, according to the Commonwealth Fund.
Thomson Reuters announced Wednesday that it has acquired Healthcare Data Management, Inc., a King of Prussia, Pa.-based health plan benchmarking firm that will now become part of the Healthcare & Science business of Thomson Reuters.
Seventy-seven percent of payers expect a changing relationship with pharmaceutical companies, with 48 percent calling for pharmas to take a more active role in supporting payer managed care (DM, MU, adherence) programs according to a July 2010 poll by The Gantry Group, LLC.
CMS has issued instructions to states on how they can qualify for the extended enhanced federal Medicaid matching rates under H.R. 1586.
Connolly Healthcare posted approvals Friday for the review of medical necessity for the same 29 MS-DRGs already cited earlier this month by two other Recovery Audit Contractors (RACs).