Population Health
Rates of potentially preventable readmissions declined across all conditions between 2010 and 2014, according to a MedPAC analysis of Medicare claims data.
Eyeing fast-growing urban and suburban markets where demand for health care services is outstripping supply, some health care systems are opening tiny, full-service hospitals with comprehensive emergency services but often fewer than a dozen inpatient beds.
Government spending on "compounded" drugs that are handmade by retail pharmacists has skyrocketed, drawing the attention of federal investigators who are raising fraud and overbilling concerns.
A recent study examined this pattern and found the prescriptions are used and renewed more often than you might imagine.
Americans in their 80s and 90s are not the ones amassing the largest medical bills to hold off death, according to a new analysis that challenges a widely held belief about the costs of end-of-life care.
The deficit of properly trained physicians is expected to get worse. By 2030, one in five Americans will be eligible for Medicare, the government health insurance for those 65 and older.
The number of travel-related cases is growing, and public health officials predict it is only a matter of time until the first locally transmitted case is confirmed. They are scrambling to prepare strategies to combat Zika's spread. But on Capitol Hill, efforts to approve emergency funding to support all of these initiatives are being held up by partisan disputes.
Many babies born to mothers who are covered by Medicaid are automatically eligible for that coverage during the first year of their lives. In a handful of states, the same is true for babies born to women covered by the Children's Health Insurance Program. Yet, this smart approach is routinely undermined by another federal policy that requires babies' eligibility be reevaluated on their first birthday. Although they're likely still eligible for coverage, many of these toddlers fall through the cracks.
The Office of Rural Health Policy has announced the nine providers that will receive the first of $4 million in federal funding over the next three years.
Provider directories for some health plans sold through Covered California and in the private market are so inaccurate that they create an "awful" situation for consumers trying to find doctors, according to the lead author of a new study published in the journal Health Affairs.