Healthcare Finance Staff

Hospitals, physician practices and health plans across the country are boosting care -- and saving millions -- by employing quality measures, information technology and plenty of innovation. A new book tells the stories behind the successes.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services plans to develop verification data and services to support coverage and eligibility infrastructure for health insurance exchanges and seeks industry information about applications that are available.

While most states are waiting for the Supreme Court to decide the fate of the Affordable Care Act, two states – Vermont and Minnesota –  are already harnessing it to both establish health insurance exchanges and to drive healthcare delivery and payment reforms.

There's a snag in the proposed meaningful use Stage 2 rule, and it concerns whether doctors need to be good at typing. Depending on how the final requirements for Stage 2 play out, they might have to be.

Higher prices and greater use of technology appear to be the main factors driving the high rates of U.S. spending on healthcare, rather than greater use of physician and hospital services, according to a new study from the Commonwealth Fund. The study found the U.S. spends more on healthcare than 12 other industrialized countries, yet does not provide "notably superior" care.

For service providers, including telephone companies, Internet and cable companies, cloud service providers, application and data storage providers, the healthcare market is heating up, according to experts at Cisco. 

Trustees of the Medicare program today forecast increased financial troubles as a result of an aging population and rising health care costs, increasing the visibility of an issue that is already proving divisive in the 2012 presidential and Congressional campaigns.

The changes taking place in U.S. healthcare as a result of rapid healthcare IT adoption leave the nation's health IT chief  Farzad Mostashari optimistic - especially about improving quality, he told the audience at a meeting of the National Quality Forum Thursday, as he urged: "Keep our eyes on the prize."

The New York eHealth Collaborative, the New York City Investment Fund and the New York State Department of Health have launched a $4.2 million program to foster health IT innovation and create 1,500 new jobs in the state.

There was a readiness gap between what physicians thought they could do and what they were eligible to do to collect meaningful use incentives last year, a new study finds.