News

Next time you go to an emergency room, be prepared for this: If your problem isn't urgent, you may have to pay upfront.

Charitable pledges to nonprofit healthcare organizations in both the U.S. and Canada slowed in 2010. With these dwindling pledges many healthcare systems are finding it difficult to generate the philanthropic funding necessary to meet their long-term, construction, equipment and patient needs.

Mobile health, or mHealth, is poised to explode over the next decade, says Chad Udell, managing director of Float Mobile Learning, a mobile learning consulting, strategy and research firm based in Morton, Illinois.

With payment reform looming, academic medical centers (AMCs) nationwide are likely going to have to figure out how to deliver the same high-quality care in a more efficient way in order to reduce costs, according to a new report from PricewaterhouseCooper’s Health Research Institute.

Since the start of the year, a number of bills or amendments to bills targeting men's reproductive health have been submitted to state legislatures by mostly female Democratic state legislators.

Teri Fontenot President and CEO Woman’s Hospital, Baton Rouge, La.

According to Donald Berwick in a recent Wall Street Journal article, “…the formula for ACO success is clear: keep quality high, save money by improving - not by restricting - care, and remain attractive to beneficiaries, who could go anywhere for care. That's an edgy and promising design. It will work because it is set up to reward the right combination of goals for our time: transparency, coordination, consumer power and intolerance of waste. Smart entrants, focused on seamless care, outcomes and beneficiary satisfaction, will both reduce Medicare's expenditures and reap financial rewards for themselves.”

The Healthcare Supply Chain Association (HSCA) launched a new web portal last week aimed at helping small medical device suppliers gain information about the healthcare group purchasing organization (GPO) contract process and aiding them with bringing their products to the marketplace.

With the pressure to increase net income intensifying, hospitals are finding new urgency in the old saying, “every dollar counts.” No longer can health systems focus their efforts solely on optimizing their largest sources of revenue and cost. Attention has now shifted to much smaller dollar amounts. One area to consider for opportunities for revenue enhancement and cost reduction is during physician practice acquisitions.

As the contentious debate surrounding an ICD-10 delay rages on, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) fueled the fire on April 9 when it indicated its intention to push the deadline back one year to Oct 1., 2014.