Jeff Lagasse
The United States Department of Justice has reached settlements with 51 hospitals in 15 states for more than $23 million related to cardiac devices that were implanted in Medicare patients in violation of Medicare coverage requirements, the agency announced Wednesday.
If a physicians' group, hospital or revenue cycle management company can prove that its paper-based billing method is faster and less expensive than a paperless alternative, Tom Furr has a $10,000 check with their name on it. That's the premise behind the "$10,000 Healthcare Billing Challenge" being held by PatientPay, of which Furr is CEO.
Prescription drug spending in the U.S. rose 12 percent in 2014, reaching nearly $300 billion, the latest issue of the Journal of Managed Care and Specialty Pharmacy showed.
Health spending grew just 4.9 percent from December 2014 to December 2015, continuing a steady decline from a peak of 6.8 percent in February 2015, according to research and consulting group Altarum Institute. But for 2015 as a whole, health spending growth averaged 5.9 percent, the highest rate since 2007, the year preceding the recession.
A new report from the Center for Improving Value in Health Care reveals significant variation in payments in Colorado for hip and knee replacements between private health insurance payers and Medicare: Coloradans with private insurance in the northeast pay $55,000 more than their neighbors with Medicare, while those in Denver pay $17,000 over Medicare prices.
A new study on death rates and readmissions suggests that when it comes to treating older men for heart attacks, heart failure or pneumonia, veterans' hospitals compare well with others.
Advocate Christ Medical Center in Chicago recently unveiled its new $256 million patient tower. Several years in the making, it's an eight-story, 326,000-square-foot structure housing a new birthing center, operating rooms, women's health and critical care units.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has announced access to preferred cost-sharing pharmacies has improved, with the bottom 10 percent of plans so far this year offering access within two miles of 71 percent of urban beneficiaries. That's compared to 40 percent of beneficiaries who had similar geographic access in 2014.
The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating potential fraudulent claims and billing linked to specialty creams, including one marketed by former Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre, that claimed to treat pain symptoms.
The Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children at Sky Ridge Medical Center in Lone Tree, Colorado will open its new pediatric emergency department on Monday, the first dedicated pediatric ER of its kind on the hospital's campus, Sky Ridge Medical Center announced Wednesday.