News
At the Healthcare Financial Management Association’s ANI conference in Las Vegas in late June, I had the pleasure of attending a keynote speech given by Captain Chesley Sullenberger, the pilot who successfully landed a plane on the Hudson River in January 2009, saving the lives of the 155 people on board.
The obesity epidemic in the U.S. will eventually bankrupt the nation if left unchecked, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center, which held a webcast June 5 to outline its recommendations for curbing the crisis.
The obesity epidemic in the U.S. will eventually bankrupt the nation if left unchecked, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center, which held a webcast June 5 to outline its recommendations for curbing the crisis.
When politics gets in the way of policy, you end up with the situations like what is happening now in Texas and Louisiana, where Governors Rick Perry and Bobby Jindal, respectively, both strident and vocal Republican opponents of "ObamaCare," are on the record as saying they will not expand Medicaid in their states. This despite the fact the expansion will be funded at 100 percent by the federal government through 2016 and at no less than 90 percent in ensuing years.
David Rinehart, MD, a primary care physician at CaroMont Health Southpoint in Belmont, N.C., learned the importance of accountable care in just one patient visit. "I was seeing a 55-year-old patient who told me 'I'm doing much better now.' I was shocked to discover that he had recently been hospitalized for a perforated gastric ulcer, but we had no record of that - no fax from the hospital or anything. That's something that's just too important to not get communicated."
Soliant Health, a specialty healthcare staffing provider and part of Adecco Group, announced its list of America's 20 Most Beautiful Hospitals on July 3.
If you were to measure the influence any group has in politics by how much money is contributed to campaigns, the healthcare sector would deservedly be labeled influential. But lobbying insiders say it's not just the money that gives the healthcare industry authority - it's the effectiveness of the advocates the industry employs - and that effectiveness - maybe to the surprise of some - is dependent as much on trustworthiness as on anything.
A recent Yale study of the care quality received at safety-net hospitals in metropolitan areas of the U.S., which provide care for the majority of uninsured, low-income and other vulnerable populations, found that the quality at these facilities is nearly the same compared to non-safety-net hospitals in the same areas.
When the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced a one-year delay for ICD-10 implementation in February 2012 -- pushing the date back to Oct. 1, 2014 -- shrewd CFOs kept their focus and pushed forward with their implementation plans and schedules.