Reimbursement
If Donald Berwick, MD, is confirmed as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, he and David Blumenthal, MD, the national coordinator for health IT, would be a "dream team" in pursuing a coherent national healthc
President Barack Obama roused an enthusiastic crowd in support of his landmark health reform in Maine on Thursday, touting a new course that will "build on the system of private health insurance that we already have
The Medicare recovery audit contracting (RAC) project has some accountability, integrity and reliability shortcomings, according to a new report issued by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
Forty-eight upstate New York hospitals earned more than $22 million in quality improvement incentive payments from Excellus BlueCross BlueShield as part of the health insurer's Hospital Performance Incentive Program.
Launched in 2004, the program uses nationally recognized standards and guidelines to address specific areas for improvement, including clinical outcomes, patient safety, patient satisfaction and efficiency.
"Aetna is dedicated to helping people achieve health and financial security, and we believe fostering a healthy environment is an important part of this mission," reads the health insurer's environmental policy statement. "We are committed to limiting our environmental impact by reducing our energy consumption and the use of other resources… because we recognize the impact of a clean environment on the health of our members."
American Well, which offers Web-based physician visits for members of health plans in Hawaii and Minnesota, has landed another contract closer to home.
NaviNet, the country's largest real-time healthcare communications network, has announced a partnership with major health insurers in New Jersey to build a multi-payer portal as a "one-stop shop" for physicians to communicate directly with an array of health plans.
The Regenstrief Institute, recognized as a healthcare IT leader, has been awarded a contract to help the Social Security Administration and Indiana healthcare providers make disability case determinations faster and better.
The Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare (CAQH), a nonprofit alliance of health plans that seeks to simplify administration for payers and providers and enable better care for patients, has announced a partnership with VeriSign, Inc., the Mountain View, Calif. network infrastructure company.
The two of them will launch a pilot program that aims to demonstrate a secure data exchange that could be a model for national health IT interoperability.
For all the excited talk about the potential for IT to transform the healthcare industry for the better, many doctors are skeptical about the future, according to a recent survey conducted by athenahealth, the provider of online practice manag