Healthcare Finance Staff

As all eyes focus on the efforts of states to get their mandated health insurance exchanges up and running, Bloom Health this week entered the fray with the launch of two "private" exchanges serving individual health plans and their members.

Health Level Seven (HL7) and the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation (IHTSDO) announced Thursday that they have expanded collaborative efforts.

Now that July is here, the health IT realm is officially within the six-month countdown to HIPAA 5010. It's no surprise that the state of the HIPAA 5010 transition is something of a mess.

OptumInsight (formerly Ingenix) and Dallas-based RemitDATA have together launched Remit Advice Professional, a Web-based service that offers physician practices access to intelligence about health plan claims processing trends, alongside coding and referential tools to increase productivity, reduce denials and prevent delays.

The key to a successful wellness program lies in the ability to reimburse people for engaging in healthy activities, like going to a fitness center. But health plans, insurers and employers have long struggles with how to properly reimburse a workout.

4medica, provider of a cloud and SaaS-based clinical integration platform, announced Wednesday it will be joining forces with Kodak to help hospitals and physicians efficiently digitize clinical data.

Louisiana's Making Medicaid Better initiative announced that it had received proposals from 12 separate entities to become coordinated care networks under the state's effort to remake its insurance program for the poor. Among the 12, three companies proposed a shared savings network model while nine proposed a pre-paid network structure.

Finding ways to create a payment model that rewards high-quality outcomes, reduces avoidable costs and protects payer and provider margins is the ultimate goal of those working to reform the healthcare system today. That was the focus of a recent education session, "Bridging the Payer and Provider Gap: Creating a Shared-Savings Payment Model for Increased Quality and Efficiency," at HFMA's ANI conference and exhibition held at the Gaylord Palms Resort in Orlando, Fla., June 26-29.

Leaders of healthcare systems, hospitals and healthcare payers are on the fence when it comes to their participation in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' shared savings program (MSSP) - the Medicare ACO program - according to a recent poll led by KPMG LLC.