News

To best meet the goals of optimized, coordinated patient care and also help curb costs, physicians should be at the center of accountable care organizations (ACOs), the American Medical Association told the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in a Dec. 2 letter.

The number of people enrolled in either a consumer-driven health plan or high-deductible health plan reached 22 million in 2010, according to the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute.

A new partnership between two healthcare information technology companies will allow patients registering for medical appointments on wireless touchscreen devices to pay for them as well.

J. P. Morgan Treasury Services, one of the nation's largest administrators of health savings accounts, is launching an HSA broker program.

The Commonwealth Fund reports that employer-sponsored family health insurance plans increased by 41 percent from 2003 to 2009 - more than three times the rate of increase for personal income in that same time frame.

IPC The Hospitalist Company, a national hospitalist physician group practice, has acquired Senior Care of Colorado, headquartered in Aurora, Colo.

What with many healthcare entities already so far behind on both HIPAA 5010 and ICD-10 implementations as to render industry timelines almost worthless, WEDI and NCHICA reworked their recommendation.

Because he thinks in stories, Atul Gawande - surgeon, author, professor - started a recent lecture about the costs and failures of the country's healthcare system with a story about a middle-aged car mechanic in Alabama.

Karen Ignagni, president and CEO of America's Health Insurance Plans, feels that as healthcare reform moves forward, improvements in access may come at the expense of cost containment and quality.

Laura Winner, Director, Lean Sigma Program, Center for Innovation in Quality Patient Care, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Baltimore, Md.