Healthcare Finance Staff
The United States spends the highest percentage of GDP in the world on healthcare, yet we have some of the highest rates of heart disease, obesity and infant mortality. We also have the shortest life expectancy compared to developed Western Europe, Japan, Australia and Canada. Clearly, what we're doing here isn't working and has resulted in an inefficient healthcare system with the highest costs in the world and disappointing clinical outcomes.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota has recently signed up eight large health systems under an aligned incentive model, a critical milestone in the health plan's strategy of fostering an accountable care organization.
A group of states and vendors focused on eliminating the barriers to sharing electronic health records have issued a set of technical specifications to standardize connections between providers, health information exchanges and other data-sharing partners.
On the same day voters in Ohio were summarily rejecting by a margin of nearly 2-to-1 the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act, justices at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia weighed in with a ruling upholding the mandate as constitutional.
A new survey from Anthelio finds that a majority of community hospitals report having low operating margins due to rising healthcare costs and lower Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement. Nonetheless, most hospitals surveyed are still working to put in place an array of health IT.
A new study from Rand Corp. of the PROMETHEUS Payment project shows that bundling payments to providers as a means to cut healthcare costs is proving harder to accomplish than originally anticipated.
HMS Holdings Corp. announced Monday it will acquire privately held HealthDataInsights, which identifies and recoups improper payments for health plans and government payers, for approximately $400 million.
It is very likely the Supreme Court will decide to eventually hear cases challenging to the new federal health reform law at its Conference on Thursday, November 10. As Jonathan Cohn has said there is no remaining chance that the Supreme Court will pass on the issue altogether.
Louisiana Health Care Quality Forum (LHCQF) and Orion Health, Inc. announced Friday the launch of LaHIE, Louisiana's statewide health information exchange.
Siemens Healthcare announced Friday that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Yardley, Pa.-based MobileMD, Inc., a developer of health information exchange technology.