Healthcare Finance Staff
Campaigning in Louisiana before the primary there, GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney sounded a lot like arch rival Rick Santorum on healthcare.
The federal Health Insurance Exchange regulations were released in final form recently. I had the opportunity to hear Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Michael Consedine speak in Philadelphia about his state's progress towards building an exchange the very next day (I was speaking later on the program).
On Thursday, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that health insurance premium increases in nine states have been deemed "unreasonable" under the rate review authority granted by the Affordable Care Act.
The Supreme Court's decision on the future of the health reform law will likely ripple through the political atmosphere around the elections and the direction of health-related stocks in the market no matter which way the justices bend.
When ONC stands up the NwHIN Exchange in October there will be at least 25 partners spanning military, private and public health entities sharing patient records with each other on the back of various standards.
The Ohio Hospital Association (OHA) will host Ohio hospitals, nursing homes, home health agencies and federal healthcare officials on Friday, March 23, in Columbus to begin the implementation of the Partnership for Patients program, a national public-private collaboration to improve the quality, safety and affordability of health care for all Americans.
The timing of ICD-10 may still be up in the air, but eventually, the transition will call for myriad changes, some of which organizations should consider outsourcing, and some they should not.
Health IT alone is not the panacea for reducing healthcare costs system-wide, but it's "a very important and credible aspect," according to Justin Barnes, vice president government affairs at Greenway Medical Technologies.
Illinois, the home state of President Barack Obama, and the same state that elected a Democratic governor in 2010 despite saying he would raise taxes to fix the budget, sent a moderate message to the Republican Party with a strong win by Mitt Romney in the March 20 GOP primary.
The "uninsurables"-- people with serious medical conditions who can't buy health coverage on the private market -- are supposed to have a safety net to rely on in the new preexisting condition insurance plans (PCIPs). These comprehensive plans, created by the federal health care law, take all comers who have been uninsured for at least six months. The premiums can be expensive, however, running several hundred dollars a month.