Quality and Safety

The newest ACO program by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services offers higher opportunities for incentive payments if participating providers agree to take on more risk.

After two dozen infections were reported in French and Dutch hospitals, the company alerted European customers in January 2013 that a scope it manufactured could become contaminated.

Government says the ratings, which will award between one and five stars to each hospital, will be more useful to consumers than its current mishmash of more than 100 individual metrics, many of which deal with technical matters. The hospital industry, however, fears the ratings will be misleading and oversimplify the many types of care at the institutions.

One in three deaths are caused by heart attacks and strokes, resulting in over $300 billion in healthcare costs each year.

Teaching hospitals had slightly lower star ratings than non-teaching hospitals, while critical access hospitals showed high marks.

Official says one of the best ways physicians can prepare for MACRA is to sift through the list of 90 activities laid out in the rule.

National guidelines call for doctors to provide full disclosure about adverse events, and studies have shown that those discussions benefit patients. But new research finds that the act of disclosure, combined with stress from the procedure gone wrong, can be an anxious experience for some doctors.

Rates of potentially preventable readmissions declined across all conditions between 2010 and 2014, according to a MedPAC analysis of Medicare claims data.

A recent study examined this pattern and found the prescriptions are used and renewed more often than you might imagine.

The hospital groups urge CMS to address what they say are several significant underlying methodological problems with the program.