Susan Morse
The new integrated network, while not technically a merger, brings together 27 hospitals in North Texas as well as physicians both independent and associated with UT Southwestern, an academic medical center, and Texas Health Resources, a faith-based, nonprofit health system, according to UT Southwestern.
Guardian submitted false claims for hospice care for patients who did not have a terminal prognosis of six months or less, according to authorities.
Insurance companies will pay $362 million to the federal government's shared risk program beginning this November for 2014 participation, but will be short $2.5 billion in payments that they hoped to receive from the federal government, the Department of Health and Human Services announced on Thursday.
On Thursday, providers dealt with system issues, which will be followed by productivity issues and then payment issues, according to healthcare insiders.
The American Medical Association was strangely quiet Thursday on the switch to ICD-10, but at least one physician was not, saying the new diagnostic coding system represents another administrative burden that is strangling independent doctor practices.
Thursday's expected announcement brings to fruition talks that began in November 2013, when AtlantiCare said a merger would reduce costs and improve efficiency of care.
South Peninsula Hospital in Homer, Alaska Speech and Language Clinic in Kenai and the Kenai Vision Center say the private company was late in reimbursing payment or failed to pay, resulting in millions in losses, according to the lawsuit.
Among the goals are reducing unnecessary testing, providing coaching, supporting peer-to-peer education and improving tools for patient communication.
What's needed is a commitment from management, clean data, support for stakeholders such as the emergency room, a good data warehouse infrastructure and a support team.
As healthcare providers collect more data on patients than ever, and plan to use it to predict care, healthcare needs to understand the ethical implications, according to experts speaking at the Predictive Analytics World Healthcare conference in Boston Tuesday.