Healthcare Finance Staff

 Nine of Western Pennsylvania's leading healthcare providers announced Thursday that they plan to form the region's first health information exchange (HIE).

Appalachian Regional Healthcare Inc. announced it is appealing a circuit court judge's dismissal of its lawsuit against the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources' Bureau for Medical Services over inadequate Medicaid reimbursement rates.

When all is said and done, the advancement of telehealth and mobile health in the United States will be accomplished through the percolation of innovation.

Even as Oklahoma and Kansas recently said 'no thanks' to federal money aimed at helping them with the health information technology platform needed to create health insurance exchanges, the Departments of Health and Human Services and Treasury last week awarded $185M more to drive the creation of the exchanges across the country.

GAO is urging the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid beef up its approach to physician quality reporting, recommending CMS be more methodical in order to make the reports more reliable.

Two "Blue" health insurers announced earlier this week a partnership intended to expand Medicaid insurance and services nationally through a combined acquisition of AmeriHealth Mercy, which serves nearly 800,000 Medicaid members in three states.

Thomson Reuters has launched a suite of new payment reform tools designed to help U.S. hospitals manage risk and seize opportunities as new healthcare payment models go into effect.

After reading the July edition of Health Affairs, I'm concerned about the impact of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) on cost trends in the US health care system.