Capital Finance
What a year it has been for the Accountable Care Act.
In commemoration of the law's first birthday on March 23, here's a glimpse of the year in quotes.
Two Pennsylvania Congressmen – from opposite sides of the aisle – have filed a bill seeking to eliminate a competitive bidding program for durable medical equipment that has frustrated providers and consumers.
State health officials searching for solutions to Texas’ multibillion-dollar budget shortfall have set their sights on neonatal intensive care units, which they say are being overbuilt and overused by hospitals eager to profit from the high-cost care.
The number of veterans receiving VA healthcare and benefits now stands at a record 8.4 million and is projected to hit 8.6 million by 2012, according to VA Secretary Eric Shinseki.
With the federal government’s Recovery Audit Contractor program in full swing, and the changes wrought by healthcare reform promising more audits on the horizon, hospital executives are all but certain that compliance budgets will need to rise in coming years.
Just about everyone agrees that the way we pay for primary care needs fixing. Under the current insurance model, doctors get paid for procedures and tests rather than for time spent with patients, which makes doctors and patients alike unhappy and increases costs.
Supporters of poison control centers say a proposed $27 million reduction in funding, part of a package of cuts announced in February by House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), would close some centers and lead to higher healthcare costs.
Cogent Healthcare and Hospitalists Management Group are merging to form the largest private hospitalist company in the United States. Officials say the merger will bring together two of the strongest companies in the rapidly growing hospitalist industry, with nearly 1,000 affiliated hospitalists and extenders practicing in more than 100 healthcare facilities nationwide.
The Skilled Healthcare Group, a holding company with subsidiary healthcare services companies, has announced that its board of directors has engaged J.P. Morgan Securities to assist the company in exploring strategic alternatives to maximize stockholder value, including a potential sale of the company's real estate assets or the whole company.
Community Health Systems officials say a lawsuit filed by Tenet Healthcare that claims CHS overbilled Medicare by $280 billion from 2006-2009 is 'baseless' and shows Tenet is engaged in a 'scorched earth' defense of CHS' hostile takeover bid launched in early December.