Quality and Safety
Under the model, hospitals in 67 geographic areas will receive additional payments if quality and spending performance are strong, or if not, have to potentially repay Medicare for a portion of the spending for care for a lower extremity joint replacement procedure.
The goal is to increase the approximately 59 percent of Humana individual Medicare Advantage members who have primary care physicians participating in value-based relationships, to 75 percent by the end of 2017.
Organizations were eligible to submit proposals for two types of projects: those that address issues of quality occurring within the local service area; and those focused on expanding the scope of quality improvement interventions with proven, but limited success.
In a novel initiative, Geisinger Health System is launching a refund program for patients not met with "kindness and compassion," President and CEO David T. Feinberg, MD, announced this week.
When errors happen in the hospital, questions arise: Who's responsible? If treatment makes things worse - meaning patients need more care - who pays?
Going forward, the exam every medical student and new physician must take to get a license will include questions about military medicine.
Truven said the winning hospitals spent $6,100 less on average per bypass surgery than hospitals that did not win recognition.
Because hospital-acquired infections are a common complication and extend inpatient stays, hospitals actually save money by building costly, single-patient rooms, according to a new study by Cornell University.
For the fourth consecutive year, physician-owned hospitals are among the top performers in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services value-based purchasing program, according to Physicians Hospitals of America.
The American Medical Association is adding 20 leading medical schools to the 11 already participating in its Accelerating Change in Medical Education Consortium, a group that hopes to "bridge the gaps that exist between how medical students are trained and how healthcare is delivered" in the 21st Century.