Quality and Safety

With a changing medical model that is moving from treating the sick to helping people stay fit, wellness centers have become a component of the real estate strategies for some health systems, hospital executives told an audience of healthcare real estate professionals at THE Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) International's Medical Office Building conference in Atlanta in early May.

At the recent HIMSS Virtual Conference and Expo, David Kendrick, MD, CEO of MyHealth Access Network, a Beacon Community, spoke on his experiences not just implementing a community HIE, but also streamlining costs and improving quality of care in the state of Oklahoma.

By 2020, sales of new vaccines that do not currently exist on the market may hit $24.8 billion, predicted market research firm Kalorama Information in a recent report.

According to a new study published in the June issue of Health Affairs, half of adults over the age of 65 visited the emergency department at least once in their last month of life. In addition, three-quarters of those ED visits led to hospital admissions and more than two-thirds of those visitors died during their stay.

While payers across the country have launched a host of different forms of payment initiatives like ACOs and patient-centered medical homes, designed around some form of risk sharing, Washington-based Premera Blue Cross has found success via its unique payment model it calls Global Outcomes Contracting.

Data breaches are costly and can do great damage to a healthcare organization's reputation. Here are 10 of the largest data breaches in 2012... so far.

One of the government's goals is to align its priorities with the private sector, including the development of accountable care organizations, said Marilyn Tavenner, acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, in a keynote address Thursday at the Third National ACO Summit in Washington, D.C.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced yesterday 45 commercial, state and federal insurers who will participate in the Comprehensive Primary Care (CPC) initiative, an effort to improve public health via an emphasis on primary care.

Last week, a number of major national hospital organizations, such as the American Hospital Association (AHA), lent their support to the recently updated Statement of Principles and Guidelines on practices that hospitals should follow in regards to billing and collection, which incorporate patient-friendly billing practices.

Value-based purchasing (VBP) is gaining favor over the conventional fee-for-service model with many healthcare leaders, according to a Forbes Insight study released Tuesday.