Patient Engagement

Forty-six percent of covered workers have a deductible of at least $1,000 this year for single coverage as employers shift to "consumer-directed" plans that give members incentives to seek less-costly care.

A new consumer website unveiled Monday by the California Department of Insurance hopes to help Californians better shop for health care based on both quality and price.

Payment initiatives and increasing patient expectations are slowly forcing changes, encouraging doctors to be better listeners and more sensitive.

Employers again are sharply focused on employee wellness, and some are raising the bar to qualify for program incentives.

For patients, connecting with a physician's office or group practice on Facebook can be a simple way to keep up with basic health news.

As hospitals chase better patient ratings and health outcomes, an increasing number are rethinking how they function at night -- in some cases reducing nighttime check-ins or trying to better coordinate medicines -- so that more patients can sleep relatively uninterrupted.

As the clinical-financial relationship tightens, hospitals may want to consider whether they have appropriately organized their staffing roles and relationships to take the greatest advantage of the trend.

While bottom line impact may be tough to measure when it comes to financial investment, patients just want their own bottoms covered.

For providers to thrive under healthcare payment and delivery model reform, the patient experience must align with the patient expectation.

Among taxpayers who claimed a subsidy, about 1.6 million, or half of taxpayers who claimed or received a subsidy, had to pay money back to the government because their actual income was higher than projected when they applied for the subsidy.