Kelsey Brimmer
Hospitals in the state of Maine are bracing for an uncertain future in 2014. Maine is one of 23 states not planning on expanding Medicaid this year.
Ten years ago, executives at MaineGeneral Health, a rural healthcare system consisting of several acute care hospitals, physician practices, outpatient facilities and homecare services in central Maine, knew they had a decision to make regarding two of their facilities: they could upgrade their buildings or start from scratch.
How do the credit ratings agencies determine hospitals' ratings? And what are the differences between hospitals receiving high ratings and those receiving low? Healthcare Finance News talked to some ratings experts to get the inside scoop.
As a strategy to improve its patient satisfaction scores and re-establish the human-to-human connection between patients and caregivers, Steve Pu, DO, medical director at Twin Rivers Regional Medical Center in Kennett, Mo., helped establish an initiative called Sacred Moments in January 2012.
With the increasing costs of a growing Medicare population and of an American population that is living longer but with more chronic disease, the U.S. healthcare system needs to utilize better care coordination and payment reform to keep costs down, according to a report from the American Hospital Association (AHA).
Many safety-net hospitals that treat a higher number of lower-income patients than other hospitals are worried that the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) will have a disproportionate impact on their reimbursements due to their traditionally higher readmission rates. A new Commonwealth Fund analysis confirms those fears.
When patients have access to after-hours services with their primary care provider, emergency room usage is significantly lower and fewer patients go without needed medical care, according to a study by the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC) released last week by Health Affairs.
Bundled payment and payment reform in general are hot topics in healthcare circles, and will prove to be a challenge for many. Jay Sultan, thought leader for payment reform at TriZetto, a healthcare management solutions company, shared with Healthcare Finance News five key ideas for hospital leaders to consider in order to break barriers to successfully implement payment reform at their organizations.
Consumer-directed health plans with high deductibles typically exempt recommended preventive care such as annual physicals or screening tests from the plan's deductible or require only a small copay as a way to ease financial barriers and encourage patients to seek care. However, many patients don't understand their plan benefits for preventative office care and tend to avoid visits altogether.
According to a recent study of 54 hospitals across the country by Aon and the American Society of Healthcare Risk Management, 80 percent of hospital risk managers are now self-insuring their physicians.