Community Benefit

Phil Kalin, CEO of Colorado’s Center for Improving Value in Health Care (CIVHC) has been out in the community talking about Obamacare.

Jeffrey Brenner, MD, is on a mission to improve the quality and cost of healthcare delivery in his community. He is particularly focused on "super-utilizers," the segment of the population that uses a disproportionately high amount of hospital and ER services. Brenner spoke recently with Healthcare Finance News Editor Rene Letourneau about his research and his views on the nation's failing healthcare systems.

With healthcare costs and chronic disease rates continually rising each year, it will only become more difficult for both employees and employers (who must pay to insure their employees) to keep up financially, which is why successful employee wellness programs are becoming an increasingly important asset in the workplace.

A new study reveals that financial risk plays a role in underuse of hospice care in the United States.

Employee wellness plans can be great cost savers for both health insurance companies and employers in the long run, but with new proposed rules and regulations around wellness plans set to begin on Jan. 1, 2014, employers and insurers are going to have to be careful about following more legal requirements.

The Department of Justice announced Tuesday that False Claims Act recoveries in 2012 set records, including for healthcare recoveries, which topped $3 billion.

In a new study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, it was found that after examining patients suffering from pneumonia and heart failure, a broad range of social factors affect the risk of post-discharge readmission and mortality.

The message that home- and community-based care is more cost effective than institutional care has been touted by federal and local governments and those within the healthcare community, but a new comparative effectiveness review of long-term care of older adults receiving home- and community-based services versus care in institutions concludes that there is not enough evidence in the literature to determine cost effectiveness.

A new report indicates that while U.S. primary care physicians still trail their counterparts in other countries in their use of electronic medical records (EMRs), they are making progress and are finding more efficiencies through EMR use.

States that expand their Medicaid program eligibility under the health reform law will incur only modestly higher state costs, about 3 percent, compared with significant increases in federal funds, according to a new report from the Kaiser Family Foundation.