News
In the July/August issue of Healthcare Finance News there was an article titled ‘Physicians Fleeing Private Practice.’ To add insult to injury, there are two more reasons why this trend is likely to continue or even accelerate: Governmental audits and breaches of protected health information (PHI).
Audits and PHI are on the rise in physician practices and groups, threatening revenue streams at levels never seen before due to fines and penalties. These problems have seen considerable attention by the press and the market but, for the most part, related primarily to the hospital setting.
When it comes to compliance violations, service lines with the most repeat visits are also the most likely to be “repeat offenders.” Yet most of these specialties – including behavioral healthcare and rehab – have little political clout within the hospital and are seldom on the CFO’s radar.
That’s about to change.
There has been an excess of depressing economic news in the United States this summer.
We’ve witnessed the absurdity of the Congressional “debate” over raising the debt ceiling, which led Standard & Poor’s to downgrade the U.S. sovereign credit rating. A jittery stock market combined with weaker than expected job gains have left many economists speculating that the United States may be headed back into recession.
Last month’s decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta that struck down the individual insurance mandate has finally put the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on course for what has been inevitable from the beginning: a date with the justices of the United States Supreme Court.
The University of Kansas School of Medicine recently opened the smallest full-time medical school in the country in Salina aimed at encouraging medical students to practice in underserved rural communities.
With numerous studies pointing out the high rate of medical errors (and the resulting law suits) due to miscommunications among medical staff, in addition to increasing consumerism in the healthcare sector and reimbursement models tied to patient satisfaction, the importance of having doctors who have solid communication skills has come sharply into focus.
All healthcare spending in the United States is projected to grow at an annual average rate of 5.8 percent for the period 2010 through 2020, according to a report released in late July by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Various stakeholders in the healthcare system have talked for years about applying to the healthcare system the engineering concepts that have made manufacturers like Toyota so efficient and successful. While those working in the field have been slow to adopt those concepts, more and more people are seeing the value in doing so.
It’s going to be a record-breaking year for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the healthcare industry, according to a recent report from Irving Levin Associates.
Healthcare industry watchers are bracing for cuts to government sponsored healthcare programs once the so-called “Super Committee” begins working on ways to slash another $1.5 trillion from the budget over the next ten years.