Healthcare Finance Staff
With so much political rhetoric aimed at the Affordable Care Act these days and many openly hoping the Supreme Court will throw the baby out with the individual mandate bathwater, the law's strong points very often get drowned out by the static and noise.
Care managers take the time that physicians often don't have to get to know patients who have chronic and multiple conditions and require a lot of services. The use of care managers in this new Hudson Valley-based program is already showing improved results for readmissions.
An IT-supported pilot program in New York's Hudson Valley that embeds a network of nurse care managers in primary practices to catch patients who fall off physicians' radar, has helped close gaps in care and improved the health status of these patients.
The American Medical Association (AMA) has asked the federal government to delay the implementation deadline for ICD-10 for another year from Oct. 1, 2013, until Oct. 1, 2015, "at a minimum."
Two separate studies by researchers at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business, show a correlation between hospital readmission rates and how full the hospital was at the time of discharge, which suggests that many patients may have been sent home earlier than necessary.
States must provide details to the federal government by Nov. 16 – just 10 days after the presidential election – on how they will run online insurance marketplaces, according to guidance released May 16.
With Washington state's gubernatorial primary is three months away, the race is already taking a health reform twist as one of the Republican candidates is among the Attorneys General suing the federal government over President Obama's health reform law and, in turn, just this month is now facing a lawsuit himself by a group of women for doing just that.
According to research new research from the American Heart Association, the differences in regional readmission rates for heart failure are more closely connected with the availability of care and socioeconomics rather than with hospital performance or a patient's degree of illness.
The states of Illinois, Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee and Washington will receive $181 million in grants from the Health and Human Services Department to help them establish health insurance exchanges.
Leading financial analysts scoffed at the notion of a healthcare IT "bubble" that could slow the pace of mergers and acquisitions this year. Speaking on a panel called "Financing The Deal" at the Nashville Health Care Council, they predicted that 2012 M&A activity would be brisk, though not superheated.