Healthcare Finance Staff
Medicare physicians will get smacked with a 24 percent payment cut on Jan. 1, 2014, unless Congress takes action. So it's not surprising that healthcare industry associations are publicly calling for an end to the payment mechanism that will effectively slash their reimbursement.
To not only survive in but also successfully adapt to a reformed healthcare marketplace, insurers are taking varied diversification paths -- some of them betting against history.
University Hospitals has signed a new accountable care collaboration with Cigna that will enhance care coordination and reduce costs and reach some 10,000 people covered by the company's health plan and who receive care from the 1,500 primary care physicians and specialists employed by UH.
Among the biggest obstacles in getting health plan members to comparison shop is the popular notion that "you get what you pay for" -- because it's actually true in most other industries.
Although the country's longstanding problem of inadequate healthcare access may be solved by the Affordable Care Act, the investigator behind Time's "Bitter Pill" thinks the law will at best make only modest gains towards its namesake principle of affordability.
If it feels like there are more federal compliance requirements for health plan staff these days, it's because there are -- from exchanges to HIPAA to Medicaid to Medicare Medicare Advantage.
Health plans are increasingly using mobile health to engage its customers, but Molina Healthcare in Utah has gone a step further by providing the use of free cell phones to eligible Medicaid members so they can receive text message-based health services and be more involved in their care.
New research suggests that hospitals can lower their readmission rates and improve patient care simply by using oral nutritional supplements as part of an overall patient care protocol. Better nutrition is often overlooked as a tool to support better outcomes.
Not long ago, New York's Medicaid program had a pretty awful reputation: some of the highest per capita spending, mediocre care quality, coverage for medically dubious procedures and widespread fraud. Today, the state is making strides to shed that image.
With venture capital firms currently investing record amounts in the healthcare space, mobile health entrepreneurs are keen to take advantage. As a result, next month's mHealth Summit Venture+ Forum may be the place to see many deals go down.