Mary Mosquera
After hearing for years that there were too many specialists and not enough primary care physicians, research in Health Affairs has upset the apple cart by forecasting an insufficient number of specialists to meet the needs of an enlarging elderly population with multiple chronic conditions.
While a handful of states said they would not expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, all state Medicaid programs are experiencing some transformation.
Commercial and public payers and providers toiled in the trenches putting accountable care organizations (ACOs) and other new models of payment and delivery to work this year to determine if they in reality could improve quality and cost.
The long-awaited health insurance exchanges, and in particular the federal HealthCare.gov, opened Oct. 1 in a tangled mess of poor software code, insufficient capacity and functionality and a lack of large IT project management best practices.
Whether or not accountable care organizations should take on more risk after just one year of experience or after three years in the Medicare Shared Savings Program was the issue the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission addressed at its monthly meeting Thursday.
Tenet Healthcare stock plunged Tuesday after the Dallas-based company lowered its fourth-quarter outlook and reported lower than estimated third-quarter earnings.
The federal agency that projects the nation's healthcare workforce needs has lagged in publishing updated estimates, leaving the government and industry to base their policies and investments on old data.
Community Health Systems reported a sharp drop in earnings for the third quarter and lowered its full-year earnings outlook on the challenging environment for healthcare providers and sliding patient volume.
Medical device maker Stryker Corp. will pay $13.3 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle civil charges that the company bribed physicians, healthcare professionals and government officials to obtain or keep business in five countries.
The results of the National Committee for Quality Assurance's annual report on healthcare quality show some improvements but also marked problems.