Reimbursement
Employer-sponsored health care is at a crossroads, with myriad financial challenges, legal uncertainties and the result of the 2012 election weighing heavily on company decisions about healthcare benefits, according to a new Deloitte issue brief.
A legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act's restriction on doctors owning hospitals was foiled last week when the U.S. Court of Appeals in Houston dismissed an appeal from Physician Hospitals of America and the Texas Spine & Joint Hospital.
Most of the headlines about the choice of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as running mate for presidential candidate Mitt Romney have screamed about how the author of the House budget plan would upend the Medicare program and upset seniors' certainty about healthcare. Ryan's plans for Medicaid, however, are more extreme and immediate.
In early August, Humana purchased Harris, Rothenberg International, a private company providing employee assistance programs, or EAPs. Considering that the EAP market is so consolidated, observers say, the acquisition may be more about staying competitive than generating new revenue.
Overall U.S. healthcare prices increased slightly from June to July 2012, rising 0.2 percent, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
About one third of Americans are willing to receive some of their healthcare from robots, and 98 percent said they would receive robot care if it meant lower co-pays and health insurance costs.
A plan by Kansas state officials to move virtually all of the state's Medicaid recipients into managed care organizations offers a glimpse at a national trend, with potential rewards and risks for insurers mulling MCO contracts in growing Medicaid markets.
The country's five largest insurers released their second quarter earnings in late July and early August, revising their 2012 projections, for better and worse.
Fifteen years after the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (OBRA) directed the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to implement intermediate sanctions for noncompliant home health agencies (HHAs), the federal agency has finally complied.
The business of healthcare is complex and is often not clearly understood by the patient or even by the medical office staff. Here are five steps that medical practices should take to help patients understand medical bills and be better prepared to handle them.