Healthcare Finance Staff
Concerns over young buyer "sticker shock" and adverse selection associated with new 3:1 age rating rules have been largely overblown, according to an Urban Institute study finding that premium subsidies will offset increases for many young insurance consumers.
While Connecticut's 2014-2015 budget has yet to be finalized, hospitals and healthcare systems in the state are claiming that Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's proposed cuts of more than $500 million in hospital funding over the next two years would be devastating.
Two years after receiving federal planning grants and 9 months after inking an IT contract, the Minnesota Health Insurance Exchange's enabling legislation is being finalized by state lawmakers, amid competing visions for regulatory scope.
A physicians commission co-chaired by former Senate majority leader Bill Frist, MD, a Republican and heart surgeon from Tennessee, is calling for the federal government to phase out the fee-for-service payment model within the next decade.
As the ICD-10 deadline looms closer, many healthcare organizations are still trying to come up with the most effective communications, collaboration and testing strategies to assure implementation of the diagnostic and procedural code set change.
Concerns are emerging that the adoption of electronic health records is leading to inappropriate increases in billings to payers, including Medicare, and that these higher billings could undermine or even overwhelm any cost savings generated by the digitization of providers. The concerns are legitimate but overall I'm not worried about this phenomenon, at least in the long term.
State regulations defining the scope of medical practice for nurse practitioners (NPs) vary widely and more restrictive states also seem to influence restrictive reimbursement policies, a study by the Center for Studying Health System Change has found.
The mHealth Alliance and TechChange announced Friday that registration has opened for their flagship online course, "Mobile Phones for Public Health," which will run from June 3-28, 2013.
In order for the country's healthcare system to survive in the next few years with more insured patients under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and less funding and reimbursements, every healthcare provider is going to have no choice but to make innovative changes and involve patients in the care process. So said longtime health IT advocate C. Peter Waegemann, founder of the now-defunct Medical Records Institute, during a webinar Thursday.
The Department of Health and Human Services has published final Affordable Care Act rules for commercial health insurance, covering guaranteed issue, premiums, rate review and more.