Anthony Brino
Medicare's accountable care organizations have gotten off to a mixed start, with hospital-led ACOs especially reporting financial challenges. By contrast, physician-led ACOs may have built-in advantages, and could be a new source of competition.
In the past year, several large insurers have hired executives from outside the industry, seeking to bring in new skills and perspectives to help improve the experience for customers increasingly demanding more price transparency and convenience.
A group of chiropractors went to war with the Blues and it seems they've won, successfully using a novel legal theory that now has lawyers setting their sights on other large insurers.
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.