News
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last week gave tentative approval to provide $1.9 billion in initial funding to help Oregon overhaul its Medicaid system, which the state says has the potential to save $11 billion over 10 years.
Hospitals, physician practices and health plans across the country are boosting care -- and saving millions -- by employing quality measures, information technology and plenty of innovation. A new book tells the stories behind the successes.
As healthcare evolves, where do finance professionals fit in? Out front, helping to shape changes? Or more toward the back, ensuring the decisions of others all add up?
In early April, the National Quality Forum (NQF) approved for endorsement several sets of quality measures, addressing areas such as perinatal and renal care and how resources are put to use in care delivery.
Even with their own health improvement strategies in place, some states, such as Vermont and Minnesota, are already harnessing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to establish health insurance exchanges and to drive healthcare delivery and payment reforms to the extent that their legislatures enable them.
The term “unelected bureaucrats” has been bandied about in Congress when referring to a particularly loathsome provision - to some - of the Affordable Care Act: the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). The reference is to the 15 people who will serve on IPAB, all of whom are subject to Senate confirmation.
Cathy Thomas Hess, RN, a clinical wound care expert, founded Wound Care Strategies in 1995 as a healthcare business consulting company. Now called Well Care Strategies, the company has expanded to locations in three states, offers its own electronic medical record software system and has evolved into a new business model: In 2010, the company became a benefit corporation.
Across the nation, healthcare organizations are discovering that collaborative care transcends the medical discipline. Patients often experience “upstream” legal problems that can later adversely affect their health. That’s why there’s a dramatic increase in the number of medical-legal partnerships (MLPs), where legal professionals work closely with providers to identify and resolve these issues.
BALTIMORE – While legislators and judges in Washington D.C. work to either eviscerate or preserve the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, two men in Maryland – one a serial entrepreneur and the other a physician and respected public health official – work diligently to create a new model for healthcare delivery and insurance, a self-described “audacious attempt to create systemic change.”
By now, the nine justices of the Supreme Court know the fate of the Affordable Care Act and the individual mandate and are actively writing drafts of the decision, which most expect will be handed down in late June.