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Medicare physicians will get smacked with a 24 percent payment cut on Jan. 1, 2014, unless Congress takes action. So it's not surprising that healthcare industry associations are publicly calling for an end to the payment mechanism that will effectively slash their reimbursement.
To not only survive in but also successfully adapt to a reformed healthcare marketplace, insurers are taking varied diversification paths -- some of them betting against history.
Concentrated economic power, combined with fee-for-service incentives, has made healthcare "the least consumer-friendly" U.S. industry and enabled arbitrary and capricious price gouging, according to the man behind Time magazine's "Bitter Pill" feature.
The lure of rewards points is strong, as credit card companies will tell you. Use your credit card and points build up to be redeemed for gift cards, reductions on gasoline, even cash. One New Jersey hospital is using a rewards points program in the hopes of more effectively managing chronic disease patients.
University Hospitals has signed a new accountable care collaboration with Cigna that will enhance care coordination and reduce costs and reach some 10,000 people covered by the company's health plan and who receive care from the 1,500 primary care physicians and specialists employed by UH.
Among the biggest obstacles in getting health plan members to comparison shop is the popular notion that "you get what you pay for" -- because it's actually true in most other industries.
Although the country's longstanding problem of inadequate healthcare access may be solved by the Affordable Care Act, the investigator behind Time's "Bitter Pill" thinks the law will at best make only modest gains towards its namesake principle of affordability.
Not long ago, New York's Medicaid program had a pretty awful reputation: some of the highest per capita spending, mediocre care quality, coverage for medically dubious procedures and widespread fraud. Today, the state is making strides to shed that image.
Since undocumented immigrants can't participate in the healthcare insurance exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act, millions of foreign-born residents will be excluded, leaving hospitals to continue to pick up the cost of their care.
New research suggests that healthcare organizations can lower their readmission rates and improve patient care simply by using oral nutritional supplements as part of an overall patient care protocol.