Reimbursement

The recent delay of the employer mandate for medium-sized businesses will hurt not-for-profit hospitals because it postpones increased revenues from expanded coverage of previously uninsured patients, and the subsequent reduction in bad debt and charity care it would bring, a Moody's report said.

After watching the failures and successes of other states and HealthCare.gov, Idaho is making its own foray into running an insurance exchange, tapping a young Silicon Valley tech firm and an established Beltway contractor.

Since the recession first began in 2008, hospitals and health systems have continually seen a drop in inpatient volumes. Most industry experts say they expect more of the same for the rest of 2014 and even the next five years or so.

Medicare accountable care organizations are having varying rates of success in addressing their patients' diabetes and heart disease, according to government data released Friday.

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.