Reimbursement

In early July, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued proposed changes that would update payment policies and rates for physicians, dialysis facilities and services to Medicare beneficiaries in hospital outpatient departments and decrease Medicare payments to home health agencies.

As Medicare spending on hospice care for nursing facility residents continues to grow, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services should more closely scrutinize hospices, concludes a report from the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General.

A recent study in Health Affairs examined for the first time the effects that differences in healthcare service volume and price, rather than simply spending and use, have on state and regional Medicaid spending.

Lifestyle-based analytics may be an "emerging" predictive health model, but experts note that it's "simply taking data that we already have at our fingertips" and analyzing it in ways that weren't possible before.

Seniors responding to a new poll said they are significantly concerned about the potential impact to their health coverage if the federal deficit reduction plan includes changes to Medicare benefits.

The American Academy of Family Physicians is warning its members that there may be a delay in the receipt of Medicare payments if an agreement on raising the federal government's debt ceiling is not reached by the Aug. 2 deadline.

State health insurance exchanges, to be built by 2014 under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), may prove to be good for vendors who provide consulting services on how to make customer service available on health plan websites, experts say.

Insurers' investments in health IT have not yielded the personalized service customers crave, according to a new survey from global consulting firm Accenture.

The trend of primary care physicians earning lower wages for their services compared to specialists is not tied to the number of hours they work, according to research published in the Archives of Internal Medicine last month.

The Minnesota-based insurer sees a greater need for healthcare in rural America, as well as an increase in people on government-funded insurance programs and a decrease in physicians, and points to telehealth and telemedicine as possible solutions.