Community Benefit
In a recent analysis of nationally representative data published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication, significant improvement in the delivery of underused care was shown; however, the overuse of ambulatory healthcare services hardly changed between the years of 1998 and 2009.
The healthcare industry continued to grow, adding 45,000 jobs to the nation's economy in December, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported Friday.
The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) has awarded $1.9 million to fund five regional and one national telehealth resource center.
As a strategy to improve its patient satisfaction scores and re-establish the human-to-human connection between patients and caregivers, Steve Pu, DO, medical director at Twin Rivers Regional Medical Center in Kennett, Mo., helped establish an initiative called Sacred Moments in January 2012.
With the increasing costs of a growing Medicare population and of an American population that is living longer but with more chronic disease, the U.S. healthcare system needs to utilize better care coordination and payment reform to keep costs down, according to a report from the American Hospital Association (AHA).
Many safety-net hospitals that treat a higher number of lower-income patients than other hospitals are worried that the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) will have a disproportionate impact on their reimbursements due to their traditionally higher readmission rates. A new Commonwealth Fund analysis confirms those fears.
When patients have access to after-hours services with their primary care provider, emergency room usage is significantly lower and fewer patients go without needed medical care, according to a study by the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC) released last week by Health Affairs.
Consumer-directed health plans with high deductibles typically exempt recommended preventive care such as annual physicals or screening tests from the plan's deductible or require only a small copay as a way to ease financial barriers and encourage patients to seek care. However, many patients don't understand their plan benefits for preventative office care and tend to avoid visits altogether.
United Health Foundation's 2012 America's Health Rankings revealed that while Americans are living longer, unhealthy behaviors and preventable illnesses threaten quality of life and add to healthcare costs.
An annual list of issues facing physicians doesn't offer any surprises. The Physicians Foundation released today its Physicians Watch List, five issues the nonprofit organization has identified as likely to have the most impact on doctors in 2013.