Healthcare Finance Staff
Commentary by Thomas Green, CEO of Lancaster Pollard
NewsMaker Interview with Peter Bastone, chief executive officer at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Madison Vejo, Calif.
Commentary by Judy Bielawski, of the Dickson Company.
A professional nurses organization announced Thursday that they would like to be included in the ongoing debate over healthcare reform.
As the first in a series designed to reach out to states and
regions across the country, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will welcome Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) for a live video chat at 5:30 p.m. EDT today.
Traditional disease management has historically been treated and tracked by condition with separate departmental IT systems.
The rise in co-morbidities – with obesity being one of the main drivers – is requiring payers to implement fully integrated, patient-centric IT systems to determine which multiple management programs best meet a patient's needs, said Lynn Dunbrack, program director for Health Industry Insights.
Prior to the 2008 passage of the Long-Term Care Community Choices Act, Tennessee was spending 99 percent of its Medicaid long-term care dollars on nursing homes instead of home-based services.
One of the largest TennCare managed care organizations in the state is replacing its care management software to enable its transition to full implementation of the program by March 2010.
CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield's $100 million integrated claims system and supporting software implementation was completed last August on budget and within a year of rollout.
"It was one of the smoothest, quickest implementations we've had," said Etta Maguire, senior director at CareFirst BCBS.
Independence Blue Cross (IBC) plans to increase the type and sophistication of clinical alerts that it has been delivering to its network physicians since April.
The regional Blues plan is moving to the next phase amid positive feedback it has been getting from physicians that the alerts are valuable.
Lansdale, Pa.-based Green and Seidner Family Practice has focused on gaps in colon cancer screenings, pap smears and mammograms, said Barry Green, MD.
At a rally for health insurance reform Tuesday in Washington, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius discussed a new report highlighting the insurance hardships faced by people with cancer.