Policy and Legislation
The Patient Advocate Foundation served nearly 83,000 patients seeking help with access to care issues in 2010, an increase of 49.8 percent from 2009. Of that number, two-thirds reported debt crisis issues related to direct medical expenses or other cost-of-living expenses.
The American Medical Association has sent a letter to the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services detailing the federal regulations that physicians consider most onerous and offering suggestions on how to improve them.
There is one small part of the Affordable Care Act that both Republicans and Democrats seem to agree on: A repeal of a provision that requires small businesses, including physicians, to file an IRS 1099 form for each vendor purchase of $600 or more.
What a year it has been for the Accountable Care Act.
In commemoration of the law's first birthday on March 23, here's a glimpse of the year in quotes.
State health officials searching for solutions to Texas’ multibillion-dollar budget shortfall have set their sights on neonatal intensive care units, which they say are being overbuilt and overused by hospitals eager to profit from the high-cost care.
The number of veterans receiving VA healthcare and benefits now stands at a record 8.4 million and is projected to hit 8.6 million by 2012, according to VA Secretary Eric Shinseki.
Medicare and Medicaid: Two venerable government assistance programs designed to help individuals that would otherwise have trouble paying their medical bills. This, however, is where the similarities between the two end.
With the federal government’s Recovery Audit Contractor program in full swing, and the changes wrought by healthcare reform promising more audits on the horizon, hospital executives are all but certain that compliance budgets will need to rise in coming years.
Just about everyone agrees that the way we pay for primary care needs fixing. Under the current insurance model, doctors get paid for procedures and tests rather than for time spent with patients, which makes doctors and patients alike unhappy and increases costs.
Supporters of poison control centers say a proposed $27 million reduction in funding, part of a package of cuts announced in February by House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), would close some centers and lead to higher healthcare costs.