Quality and Safety
For the first time in decades, sales of vaccines declined in 2011, due in large part to a weak flu season, said a recent report from healthcare market research publisher Kalorama Information.
Due to the increased risk and more time and money that is necessary for regulatory compliance, more and more hospitals and healthcare groups have acquired smaller, physician-owned practices in the last 10 years.
Healthcare ventures outside the hospital walls appear to be the favored target of investors looking for new opportunities, financial specialists say. Driving that interest is a vision of community-based care sites through accountable care organizations, healthcare reform, evolving private pay models and an industry-wide initiative to bring down costs.
Last week, the Workplace Wellness Campaign (WWC), aimed at all New Jersey employers, was launched by the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute (NJHCQI) in partnership with the New Jersey Business and Industry Association (NJBIA) and New Jersey Chamber of Commerce (NJCC).
A patient spends just a few hours or days under the supervision of a clinician or nurse after a surgery or hospitalization. The rest of the recovery time and healing process is done within the patient's home. It's important to be able to retrieve real-time information from patients within these critical post-hospital days so physicians can spot trends and respond in a timely fashion if something needs immediate attention.
In 2009, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (BCBS) launched the Alternative Quality Contract (AQC), a global payment reimbursement pilot program that rewards participating physician groups for controlling spending and improving quality of care. A Commonwealth Fund-sponsored analysis of the first two years of the five-year pilot has found that such programs may be effective at controlling healthcare spending and improving quality.
A number of regional healthcare trends in California have been identified in new market studies of Sacramento and Riverside/San Bernardino conducted by the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC) in Washington, D.C., and funded by the California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF).
The Parkinson's Disease Foundation (PDF) last week awarded $1.35 million in research grants for 13 novel projects designed to find the cause(s) of and a cure for Parkinson's disease.
According to the authors of a new analysis published Wednesday in Health Affairs, there are three overlying lessons for state and federal healthcare policy makers to be learned from Massachusett's healthcare law experiences.
Ten major biopharmaceutical companies announced Wednesday that they have joined forces to form a nonprofit organization called TransCelerate BioPharma Inc., to accelerate the development of new medicines.