Anthony Brino
Another round of successful lobbying to avoid Medicare Advantage rate cuts has netted a small increase of 0.4 percent to the average plan, and insurers are looking at the programs continuing to grow.
With a banner of its logo draped over the New York Stock Exchange on the Friday before St. Patrick's Day, Castlight Health went public -- another sign that reducing friction and opacity in healthcare is sparking a gold rush of sorts.
As more employers seek to integrate workers' compensation into benefits packages, a range of market trends and regulations are slowing what could be a natural fit.
New entrants in the healthcare market could snatch billions of dollars of revenue from traditional healthcare companies if the traditional companies do not move faster to provide services in the setting consumers want.
Catholic Health Initiatives' long-term transformation strategy has a bit of the expected -- IT investment --and the unexpected -- the creation of an insurance business.
The release of Medicare's payments to doctors could impact medical practices and health systems in a lot of ways, including being fodder for fraud accusations -- a problem that's worth getting ahead of from the get-go.
The federal government and a number of hospitals may want to transition to a new Medicare reimbursement model. But there are still billions of dollars in disputed fee-for-service claims waiting to be settled, sowing animosity between health systems and the feds.
With millions of Americans on new health insurance exchange plans now responsible for high deductibles, hospitals, drug makers, insurers and regulators are entering a new frontier of payment disputes.
A new interpretation of a 40-year-old law could offer healthcare providers more options for appealing payer recoupments or preventing them altogether.
If global spending becomes the norm in Medicaid, health systems, medical practices, home health and community organizations will face an even greater impetus to collaborate. In the Empire State, some are already starting the journey.