Kaiser Health News
Since the fines began, national readmission rates have dropped, but roughly one of every five Medicare patients sent to the hospital ends up returning within a month.
Seven years after Congress passed a landmark law banning discrimination in the treatment of mentally ill people, many families and their advocates complain it stubbornly persists, largely because insurers are subverting the law in subtle ways and the government is not aggressively enforcing it.
The NOTICE Act would require hospitals to provide written notification to patients 24 hours after receiving observation care, explaining that they have not been admitted to the hospital, the reasons why and the potential financial implications.
Despite concerns about turning the obstetrical specialty into "shift" work similar to emergency physicians, the laborist trend is growing as hospitals seek to improve patient safety and physicians increasingly recognize they need help responding to emergencies.
The federal health insurance program for the elderly and disabled, has come a long way since its creation in 1965 when nearly half of all seniors were uninsured. Now the program covers 55 million people, providing insurance to one in six Americans.
Though it provides a vital safety net, Medicaid faces five big challenges to providing good care and control costs into the future.
Admissions and emergency-room care rose in centers that were part of the experiment compared with results in those that weren't.
Under the Affordable Care Act, state agencies largely retain the right to regulate premiums in their states, but so far only a handful have finalized premiums for the coming year, for which enrollment begins in November.
Among taxpayers who claimed a subsidy, about 1.6 million, or half of taxpayers who claimed or received a subsidy, had to pay money back to the government because their actual income was higher than projected when they applied for the subsidy.
Medicare applied the new quality measure to more than 9,000 agencies based on how quickly visits began and how often patients improved while under their care.