Population Health
Only a few days remain to submit speaker and session proposals for the Healthcare IT News and HIMSS Pop Health Forum 2016, which will be held in Boston May 19-20.
Experts say the California exchange uses more of its powers as an "active purchaser" than any other state. That means it can decide which insurers can join the exchange, what plans and benefits are available and at what price.
The Department of Health and Human Services is looking at ways to improve the quality of care at facilities operated by the Indian Health Service, focusing especially on the Great Plains area.
In December 2014, Medicare began a pilot program in three states, including Pennsylvania, to cut down on what officials believed were improper payments, including some possible fraud and abuse, in nonemergency ambulance services. The program moved to more aggressively enforce Medicare's long-standing policy requiring that beneficiaries be so weak they could only be moved on a stretcher before it would pay for repeated, nonemergency ambulance service.
Northwell Health, which until January was known as the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, will air its first-ever Super Bowl ads during Sunday's game -- a 30-second spot in the second quarter, and two 30-second ads that will run during pre-game coverage.
Six hospitals in the North Carolina-based Vidant Health system will join Winston-Salem's Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center's Telestroke Network by the end of the year, Wake Forest Baptist announced in a statement Wednesday.
Stung by losses under the federal health law, major insurers are seeking to sharply limit how policies are sold to individuals in ways that consumer advocates say seem to illegally discriminate against the sickest and could hold down future enrollment.
To become a reality, the promise of patient engagement requires good data, communication, transparency, quality measures, and most importantly, listening to the patient's goals, according to experts interviewed Tuesday by The Hill's Bob Cusack and Sarah Ferris.
It's a powerful draw for hospitals and other health care providers scrambling to adjust to sweeping changes in how they're paid for the care they provide. Whether the emails actually trigger an empathetic connection or not, the idea of tailoring regular electronic communications to patients counts as an innovation in health care with potential to save money and improve quality.
Pennsylvania-based Independence Blue Cross' announcement that it will cover a complex type of genetic testing for some cancer patients thrusts the insurer into an ongoing debate about how to handle an increasing array of these expensive tests.