Quality and Safety
Like it or not, a new healthcare landscape is taking shape that runs counter to just about every convention the industry has ever known.
Health insurer Priority Health has announced it has contracted with Healthcare Blue Book to publish cost and quality information for more than 300 procedures by facility and physician for its insurance members in Michigan.
Healthcare organizations have often been criticized for being slow to adapt to changes in the marketplace. A recent accelerator program spearheaded by Independence Blue Cross (IBC), Penn Medicine and DreamIt Ventures hopes to change that by backing 10 innovative healthcare startups. And while none of these startups are likely to revolutionize medicine, they do suggest that there are many entrepreneurs with promising solutions that may reduce the cost of care while maintaining its quality.
I sometimes explain to medical students that they are entering a profession being transformed, like coal to diamonds, under the pressure of a new mandate. "The world is going to push us, relentlessly and without mercy, to deliver the highest quality, safest, most satisfying care at the lowest cost," I'll say gravely, trying to get their attention.
Geographic Medicare costs disparities have more to do with health differences across communities than with inefficient care delivery, according to a new study from the Center for Studying Health System Change.
According to the results of a study published Tuesday in Annals of Emergency Medicine, disabled Medicare patients under age 65 who are unable to take their prescription medications due to cost concerns are more likely to visit the emergency department at least once during the course of a year.
Last week, Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas announced an agreement to pay a $1.4 million settlement to the United States Department of Justice over Medicare and Medicaid fraud allegations.
Hospitals with the highest rates of cardiac arrests tend to have the poorest survival rates for those cases, while hospitals that do the best job of preventing cardiac arrest among their patients tend to be better at saving patients with cardiac arrest, according to new research published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Medicaid coverage alone is no guarantee of improved health outcomes, but researchers found that expanding Medicaid in Oregon reduced depression and eliminated out-of-pocket costs for its low-income enrollees.
Emergency departments are now responsible for half of all inpatient admissions and accounted for nearly all the increases in admissions between 2003 and 2009, according to a new report from Rand Corporation.