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A one-year-old accountable care organization established by Allina Hospitals & Clinic and payer HealthPartners has reported that it reduced medical cost by $6 million in 2010 and reduced the medical cost trend to 3 percent compared with 8 percent in 2009.
As the federal government pours billions of dollars into the healthcare system to encourage the adoption rate of health information technologies, the Institute of Medicine is about to release a report this week raising concerns about the risks associated with electronic health records.
First-time applicants to medical school increased by 2.6 percent in 2011 to 32,654 students and total applicants increased by 2.8 percent to 43,919 according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.
So far this year, more than 2.2 million people with Medicare have saved more than $1.2 billion on their prescriptions, for an average of $550 per person, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced Friday.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services on Thursday released the final regulations for accountable care organizations (ACOs), which contain major revisions from the draft regulations released earlier this year.
In early October the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an advisory panel that helps inform the government on preventive healthcare, downgraded its recommendation on the PSA test for prostate cancer screening to a grade of D. It recommended doctors not routinely prescribe the test because “there is moderate or high certainty that the service has no net benefit or that the harms outweigh the benefits.”
As with any important process, the healthcare provider’s revenue cycle has a distinct beginning – in this case it is the patient’s initial encounter. And it is at this critical juncture that providers must do everything possible to ensure that all the financial details are in order.
Healthcare systems with a centralized and strategic approach to their real estate activities may enjoy significant competitive advantages over systems that delegate property decisions to individual hospitals, according to a new study from the financial services firm Jones Lang LaSalle.
The top five ICD-10 challenges identified in a user survey conducted by data management firm PatientKeeper are:
Healthcare Finance News Managing Editor René Letourneau spoke recently with Rosemary Sheehan, vice president of revenue cycle operations at Boston-area Partners HealthCare system about her organization’s ICD-10 preparedness efforts: