News
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.
Florida insurance regulators have approved Aetna's acquisition of Humana's affiliates there, but with conditions, according to a consent order issued last week.
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.
Community Health Systems net operating revenue for 2015 jumped by more than 4 percent to $19.4 billion, an $800,000 million increase over the same period in 2014 when that year's net operating revenue totaled $18.6 billion, according to CHS's financial statement released on Feb. 15.
This season, Downton Abbey has a new plot line that has health wonks on the edge of their seats: a heated debate about hospital consolidation that closely parallels what's going on in the U.S. healthcare system today.
The state last week won federal approval to shift most of its Medicaid recipients into managed care organizations, which are paid a fixed monthly fee from the state for each person in the plan. It's a strategy employed by about three dozen states, many for decades, to provide more predictable spending.
Injuries that brought a patient to the emergency room were most likely to have involved steps or stairs, according to the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, a resource maintained by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. According to their recent data, which concerned the year 2014, 1.14 million trips to the ER involved the common household fixture.
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.
As the 2015 tax filing season gets underway, tax preparers said a delay in new health law tax forms is causing confusion for some consumers, while others want details about exemptions from increasingly stiff penalties for not having insurance.
For the first time, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and America's Health Insurance Plans have announced standard quality measures among payers, a move designed to reduce confusion and complexity for reporting providers.