Reimbursement

PwC's Health Research Institute has predicted the top 10 issues facing healthcare in the coming year. Insurance exchanges, consumer trepidation, drug shortages and the need for organizations to prove value promise to be among the hallmarks of a 'seminal' year.

Optum, UnitedHealth's IT subsidiary, launched The Optum Institute for Sustainable Health on Tuesday, which aims to provide analysis and insight for a changing healthcare landscape. It also announced the results of a new survey, "Sustainable Health Communities – A Manifesto for Improvement."


The federal advisory Health IT Standards Committee is asking for feedback from individuals and organizations experienced in deploying specifications developed for the nationwide health information network (NwHIN) Exchange.

The ranks of American adults without health insurance is now 17.3 percent of the population, a rate that is the highest on record, according to a Gallup poll measuring uninsurance rates in the third quarter.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota has recently signed up eight large health systems under an aligned incentive model, a critical milestone in the health plan's strategy of fostering an accountable care organization.

A group of states and vendors focused on eliminating the barriers to sharing electronic health records have issued a set of technical specifications to standardize connections between providers, health information exchanges and other data-sharing partners.

On the same day voters in Ohio were summarily rejecting by a margin of nearly 2-to-1 the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act, justices at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia weighed in with a ruling upholding the mandate as constitutional.

A new survey from Anthelio finds that a majority of community hospitals report having low operating margins due to rising healthcare costs and lower Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement. Nonetheless, most hospitals surveyed are still working to put in place an array of health IT.