Reimbursement
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced it has posted new ratings on 4,000 hospitals on its "Hospital Compare" Web site, including new mortality and readmission data. According to the new data, CMS estimates that the national 30-day mortality rate for patients originally admitted for heart attack care is 16.6 percent. For heart failure patients, the national 30-day mortality rate is 11.1 percent, and for pneumonia patients the national rate is 11.5 percent.
President Obama's healthcare IT chief David Blumenthal, MD, was on hand Friday as Maine announced it will go live this summer with the country's largest statewide health information exchange.
Independence Blue Cross is providing digital alerts to physicians and specialists through a new messaging tool called Clinical Alerts.
Rising Medical Solutions, Inc., has launched a new online portal designed to help payers, patients and providers better understand healthcare transactions.
The American Medical Association says more healing is needed before it can pronounce healthcare's claims process cured.
A key problem is inconsistency, highlighting the need for standardization, the AMA says.
The nation could save billions of dollars each year in the healthcare system by reducing administrative complexity, according to the Healthcare Administrative Simplification Coalition.
Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions is teaming up with a broad-based coalition of Connecticut healthcare providers and employers to launch a statewide health information exchange.
Medicare could save up to $18 billion over the next decade by implementing a radiology benefit management program, according to MedSolutions, which provides cost management of medical services for healthcare payers.
WellNet Healthcare is targeting the Web 2.0 movement with the release of Point to Point Healthcare, described as a "Facebook-like social networking platform" for healthcare consumers.
About 45,000 office-based physicians may be eligible for up to $63,750 in ARRA funding over six years to improve and maintain their health information technology systems because of their participation in Medicaid, according to a n