More states work to implement health care law
May 16, 2012 (HHS News Release) - Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced today that Illinois, Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee and Washington will receive more than $181 million in grants to help implement the new health care law. The grants will help states establish Affordable Insurance Exchanges. Starting in 2014, Affordable Insurance Exchanges will help consumers and small businesses in every state to choose a private health insurance plan. These comprehensive health plans will ensure consumers have the same kinds of insurance choices as members of Congress. Including today’s awards, 34 states and the District of Columbia have received Establishment grants to fund their progress toward building Exchanges.
HHS also issued two guidance documents today to help states build Affordable Insurance Exchanges.
» CONTINUE READING
RELATED
• HHS Exchange Funding Tops $1B (May 17, 2012, HealthLeaders Media)
• U.S. sets deadline for proposals on state healthcare exchanges (May 16, 2012, Chicago Tribune)
• HHS publishes Exchange Guidance and draft blueprint (May 16, 2012, HealthReformGPS)
HHS launches new web-based tool to track performance of nation’s health care system
May 15, 2012 (HHS News Release) - Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today announced the launch of a new web-based tool that will make it easier for all Americans to monitor and measure how the nation’s health care system is performing.
The web-based tool, known as the Health System Measurement Project, will allow policymakers, providers, and the public to develop consistent data-driven views of changes in critical U.S. health system indicators.
» CONTINUE READING
Realigning Health with Care
by Rebecca Onie, Paul Farmer, & Heidi Behforouz
Summer 2012 (Stanford Social Innovation Review) - Everyone knows the US health care system is in crisis. We spend far more on health care than any other nation—a breathtaking $2.6 trillion annually, according to a 2011 report by the Kaiser Family Foundation. The US Department of Health and Human Services estimates that health care expenditures will be 25 percent of US GDP by 2025, twice what many developed countries currently expend.
» CONTINUE READING
Rural Health-Systems Benefit From Remote Pharmacy Technician Supervision
May 17, 2012 (PRNewswire) - Telepharmacy is helping pharmacies extend services to more patients, improve medication safety, and alleviate staffing shortages experienced by many rural health care and emergency facilities across the United States. Telepharmacy allows for a pharmacy technician to be remotely supervised in real time by a pharmacist through state-of-the-art telecommunications technology to prepare prescriptions.
» CONTINUE READING
Medicaid primary care pay: The next SGR?
by Jennifer Lubell
May 21, 2012 (amednews.com) - Putting Medicaid primary care rates on par with Medicare’s raises concerns that doctors will face a new kind of payment cliff after just two years.
Reid Blackwelder, MD, a family physician in Kingsport, Tenn., said primary care physicians in his state would benefit immensely from a federal proposal raising Medicaid payments to equal what Medicare pays for the same services.
» CONTINUE READING
CMS eases rules to cut doctors’ regulatory burdens
by Charles Fiegl
May 18, 2012 (amednews.com) - Changes to proposed regulations on Medicare conditions of participation will maintain self-governing medical staff requirements at hospitals and save nearly $1 billion.
The Obama administration removed several duplicative and burdensome regulations from Medicare that will save physicians and hospitals more than $1 billion, officials announced on May 10. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services finalized two regulations that eliminated rules deemed to have adversely affected those participating in Medicare. In one regulation, billing privileges for physicians will be protected from unjust revocations. In another rule, CMS increased flexibility on governance boards at hospitals but protected the autonomy of medical staff at each facility.
» CONTINUE READING
Health Care Could Save Billions by Reducing Waste in Six Key Areas, Says Article
by News Staff
May 16, 2012 (AAFP News Now) - The U.S. health care system could save hundreds of billions of dollars each year in public and private health care expenditures by adopting strategies to reduce waste in six key categories that are major drivers of health care costs. That's the conclusion of an article by former CMS Administrator Donald Berwick, M.D., and Andrew Hackbarth, M.Phil., an assistant policy analyst at the RAND Corp., in JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association.
"In just six categories of waste -- overtreatment, failures of care coordination, failures in execution of care processes, administrative complexity, pricing failures, and fraud and abuse -- the sum of the lowest available estimates exceeds 20 percent of total health care expenditures," say the authors.
» CONTINUE READING
Want Rural Docs? Just Ask
by Wayne Myers
May 17, 2012 (The Daily Yonder) - We know what forecasts whether a medical student will go into family practice or set up shop in a rural community. What we need now are medical school admissions officers who will care to ask the right questions.
The points of this column are briefly stated:
- If you want to know which medical school applicants will become country doctors, ask them three questions.
- Medical school programs aiming to select and train students for rural careers are effective.
- Rural docs and hospitals may be much more influential than they realize, particularly if they join with other primary care interest groups.
» CONTINUE READING
Measuring the Success of Medical Homes: Recommendations from the PCMH Evaluators' Collaborative
by Meredith Rosenthal, Ph.D., Melinda K. Abrams, M.S., and Asaf Bitton, M.D., M.P.H.
May 18, 2012 (The Commonwealth Fund Blog) - There are currently more than 90 commercial health plans, 42 states, and three federal initiatives testing the patient-centered medical home (PCMH) model. Yet, while elements of the medical home have been shown to be associated with better quality and lower cost, there are only a few high-quality, published evaluations of the impact of the PCMH model as a whole. There is an urgent need for rigorous data to strengthen the evidence base of the medical home as well as to improve implementation. In an effort to harness and share lessons from the many disparate medical home pilots and evaluations under way, The Commonwealth Fund established the Patient-Centered Medical Home Evaluators' Collaborative in 2009.
» CONTINUE READING
The Evolving Primary Care Physician
by Susan Okie, M.D.
May 17, 2012 (The New England Journal of Medicine) - The primary care doctor is a rapidly evolving species — and in the future could become an endangered one. As the United States grapples with the dual challenges of making health care more widely available and reducing the national price tag, it's hard to say how primary care physicians will fit into the delivery models that emerge. Will they be increasingly replaced by nurse practitioners and physician assistants? Will they become partners or leaders on multidisciplinary teams, spending more time supervising others and less interacting with patients? Will most become employees of large health systems, as solo and small-group practices disappear? Will having a primary care physician become a luxury, available chiefly to people who can pay a premium to enroll in a concierge practice?
» CONTINUE READING
Innovation Grants: Adding Resources To Ideas To Improve Health Care Delivery
by Christian Torres
May 17, 2012 (Kaiser Health News) - To save on health care, you have to invest in it.
At least that's the thinking of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Last week, the CMS innovation center awarded 26 grants – worth a total of $122.6 million – to a variety of health care organizations. If these plans for better patient care pan out, the programs estimate they could reap about $254 million in savings over three years.
» CONTINUE READING
Fate of 'uninsurables' hinges on Supreme Court
by Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar
May 17, 2012 (The Seattle Times) - Cancer patient Kathy Watson voted Republican in 2008 and believes the government has no right telling Americans to get health insurance. Nonetheless, she says she'd be dead if it weren't for President Barack Obama's health care law.
» CONTINUE READING
3 ways doctors can take on insurers
by Emily Berry
May 21, 2012 (amednews.com) - Physicians don’t have to remain silent if they feel a health plan is wrong.
Trying to persuade a health insurer to change a policy, fix a problem or reverse a bad decision can be frustrating for physicians. But it can be done — with persistence, and by gathering strength in numbers.
» CONTINUE READING
Health-care's top executive salaries increase with complexity of system
by Pat Ferrier
May 20, 2012 (coloradoan.com) - As reform drives health-care systems to get bigger and more complex, salaries of top executives are growing with them.
Total compensation for top health care officials in Northern Colorado over the last four years exceeded the national average, according to an analysis of documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service.
» CONTINUE READING
» TOP |
National Cooperative of Health Networks