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So long death panels. Hello "rationing" board. An independent panel authorized by President Barack Obama's health care law to control excessive Medicare cost increases is drawing heavy fire from Republicans. Nearly every health industry lobbying group is pushing for its repeal, as are some consumer advocates. GOP lawmakers call it a rationing panel, and at least one has suggested seniors will die from its decisions.
The Accreditation for Cardiovascular Excellence (ACE), a nonprofit organization whose mission is to ensure high-quality patient care and promote patient safety in facilities where invasive cardiac and endovascular procedures are performed, supports the National Strategy for Quality Improvement in Health Care (National Quality Strategy) issued today by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The National Quality Strategy highlights six priority areas to focus initial efforts for quality improvement, including promoting "effective prevention and treatment practices for the leading causes of mortality, starting with cardiovascular disease."
University of Sydney research has found female GPs see more female patients and younger patients and are more likely to consult on psychosocial issues than their male counterparts.
Home-health-care giant Amedisys has inked a deal to buy Boston's Beacon Hospice for $125 million in a deal that's expected to boost the amount of hospice patients under its care by about 40%.
There are many people whose thoughts on health care policy are divorced from fiscal math. Medicaid is providing inadequate care, you say? Spend more money. Concerned about the crisis of the uninsured? Spend more money. Raise taxes on the rich, and confiscate the ill-gotten profits of insurers and drug companies, and we can provide health care for all.
One of the first providers of MSAs, now offering investment options and a PPO medical provider network. Useful information and links for all MSA shoppers.
Settling a class-action lawsuit, California health insurer Anthem Blue Cross has agreed to limit rate increases for 122,000 policyholders whose plans have been closed to new customers. Affected policyholders for the first time would also be able to switch plans without having their medical histories reviewed.
Antibiotics for acute infections are a pillar of medicine, but doctors say the pillar is crumbling as pharmaceutical companies neglect antibiotic development and instead chase massive profits from chronic illnesses and lifestyle diseases.
American Realty Capital Healthcare Trust, Inc., ("ARC Healthcare" or the "Company") announced today that it has entered into a contract to acquire 12 high quality, income-producing healthcare facilities aggregating $257.5 million in purchase price, increasing the total size of the portfolio, including closed assets and those under contract, to 17 properties aggregating $307.1 million.
Family Physician Can't Give Away Solo Practice Dr. [Ronald] Sroka has practiced family medicine for 32 years in a small, red-brick building just six miles from his childhood home. ... Dr. Sroka, 62, thought about retiring. He tried to sell his once highly profitable practice. No luck. He tried giving it away. No luck. Dr. Sroka's fate is emblematic of a transformation in American medicine. ... [D]octors like him are increasingly being replaced by teams of rotating doctors and nurses who do not know their patients nearly as well. A centuries-old intimacy between doctor and patient is being lost.
Last week, after the then-most-recent Republican Presidential debate, I noted that Mitt Romney made news by committing to repeal Obamacare using the reconciliation process. This is important, because the reconciliation process requires only 51 votes in the Senate rather than the conventional 60. Progressive commentators pooh-poohed the idea. But now, a former Bush budget official has drawn a road-map as to how repealing Obamacare the process could work.
California was supposed to be a standard-bearer for President Barack Obama's new healthcare law, but the cash-strapped state is now slashing its healthcare safety net, the Los Angeles Times reported.
In a comprehensive analysis comparing nurse staffing in California hospitals to similar hospitals in the U.S. over nearly a decade, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing have found that controversial legislation setting nurse-to-patient ratios added more registered nurses to the hospital staffing mix, not fewer as feared.
Officials from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said Friday that site includes updated data to help consumers compare hospitals, physicians, nursing homes, home care or dialysis providers.
Should lower leg strains and sprains take up valuable ER time and resources? According to a new study by Kaj Lambers and colleagues, from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, USA, strains and sprains account for over a third of lower extremity injuries treated at emergency departments. They reason that because these problems are not life-threatening, perhaps telephone triage and scheduled care appointments might be a better use of precious emergency healthcare resources. The work is published online in Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research published by Springer.
The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act, the national long-term care insurance program included in the 2010 health reform law, is on life-support. It is increasingly likely that the Obama Administration will never develop the actual insurance policies that were supposed to be available to consumers next year.
I've never understood why some liberals think that it's unfair to use the term "Obamacare" to describe the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. (Was it equally partisan when people described Ronald Reagan's economic policies as "Reaganomics"?) It's easy to pronounce, and accurately describes the law that the President considers to be his signature legislative achievement. I've used the terms "Romneycare" and "Ryancare" to describe those politicians' health policies.
Sending thorough and timely reports to nursing homes when a patient is discharged from the hospital could help promote patient safety during the early days after a hospitalization.
An adoring piece in the November issue of The Atlantic suggests that someone has finally figured out how to make disease management profitable. For years, the idea was that investing money in prevention upfront, especially in chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart failure, could result in both health improvements and cost savings down the road. While a number of pilot programs demonstrated health improvements, the inconvenient truth was that durable cost savings, at the level of P and L, proved remarkably elusive. As a consequence, programs would often invoke concepts like absenteeism, and failing that, presenteeism to make their case.
Medicines regulators are protecting drug company profits rather than the lives and welfare of patients by withholding unpublished trial data, argue researchers in the British Medical Journal today.
Over the last 20 years, the number of hospital emergency departments in nonrural areas in the U.S. has declined by nearly 30 percent, with for-profit ownership, location in a competitive market, low profit margin and safety-net status associated with an increased risk of emergency department closure, according to a study in the May 18 issue of JAMA.
News organizations have been looking into candidates' statements from Thursday night's debate, including one by Gov. Rick Perry about Mitt Romney's book, Rep. Michele Bachmann and Perry on the HPV vaccine and Herman Cain on his cancer and the health law.
New Dental Choice, a comprehensive and affordable discount dental plan provided by First Dental Health, is now available nationwide. In addition, the plan now offers its members access to discount vision, hearing and prescription drug programs.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals today rejected two different attacks on the Obama healthcare reform act, delivering a double blow to opponents who hope to use the courts to nullify the law as unconstitutional. The decisions also set up a double conflict among courts that only the U.S. Supreme Court can unravel: Whether the healthcare act is constitutional, and whether states have a right to sue over it in the first place. Courts in Florida and Georgia have upheld state-led challenges to Obamacare, while the Fourth Circuit threw out Virginia's case against the law.
Somehow, we should have known this was coming. On the heels of the recent "mystery shopper" audit studies showing that two-thirds of children on Medicaid can't see a doctor for urgent care, Robert Pear of the New York Times is reporting that the federal government is going to sponsor its own, similar, study:
House Republicans seized on new data Tuesday showing that the number of uninsured adults has risen steadily during the Obama administration. Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee circulated the Gallup data ahead of President Obama's State of the Union address to argue that his healthcare law has failed.
Because healthy enrollees cost them less, Medicare Advantage plans would profit from selecting seniors based on their health, but Medicare strictly forbids practices such as denying coverage based on existing conditions. Another way to build a more profitable membership is to design insurance benefits that attract the healthiest patients.
President Obama is busy touting his health law, while Mitt Romney argues that an individual mandate in Massachusetts is a "conservative" idea. In the meantime, the Associated Press examines Newt Gingrich's past support of the Children's Health Insurance Program.
Nova Southeastern University's College of Pharmacy recently launched America's first Center for Consumer Health Informatics Research to deliver health care solutions through social media and cell phones.
Japan's mobile phone triad knows their customers want more from their handsets than just calling and texting -- standard Japanese models come equipped with applications to pay your train fare, buy a soft drink and even scan a coupon.
It is a review site that gives information on Health insurance Savings which is basically a medical risk prevention or protection activated through a contract between the service provider and the user for a predetermined premium.
Media outlets report on the varying views on the waivers granted so far by the Obama administration to ease requirements of the health law. Meanwhile, specific regulations -- such as those relating to the "broker rule" and accountable care organizations -- continue to be hot topics.
Here's a reality check for President Barack Obama's health overhaul: Three out of four uninsured Americans live in states that have yet to figure out how to deliver on its promise of affordable medical care.
As details emerged regarding the Obama deficit plan, news outlets explored the very different approaches favored by the White House versus the GOP to control Medicare and Medicaid spending.
Healthcare workers can most directly affect quality of life (QOL) of patients with advanced stage lung cancer by helping manage symptoms such as pain, lack of energy, shortness of breath, coughing, difficulty sleeping and dry mouth, according to a study recently published in the journal Oncology Nursing Forum.
The Hill: HHS Grants 106 New Health Care Waivers The Obama administration granted another 106 waivers last month from part of the health care reform law -; the first round of three-year waivers the Health and Human Services Department has approved.
The Department of Health and Human Services on Monday denied a request from Michigan to waive the health law's limits on insurer profits and administrative costs. Michigan becomes the second state to have its request denied following a denial of Florida's waiver request earlier this month.
HUOH is committed to its policyholders and their professional reputation by having a "zero tolerance" for nuisance claims and unparalleled aggressive defense programs for its physicians. Once again, continuing to build on its success from 2010, HUOH is attracting extraordinary physicians, managing claims exceptionally and now delivering another dividend to its' Ohio physician owners of $1,000,000.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has put the measure back on the Senate's calendar and hopes to move it forward after the chamber completes it work on the 2011 continuing resolution.
The Republicans have used an agriculture appropriations bill to send several messages: They don't want the government to require school meals that are more nutritional but also more expensive, they don't want the government to prod food companies to restrain marketing to children, and they don't want the Food and Drug Administration to regulate any substance based on anything but "hard science".
Last week, I wrote about the scandal that is CLASS, Obamacare's new entitlement for long-term care for the elderly. It turns out that Administration officials, and congressional Democrats, knew all along that the program would be a "fiscal disaster," and inserted it into the broader health-care bill because of its illusory, near-term deficit-reducing effects.
When Mitt Romney is asked, as he often is, to explain the fact that Obamacare was modeled after Romneycare, he asks the President: "If that's the case, why didn't you call me? Why didn't you ask what was wrong? Why didn't you ask if this was an experiment, what worked and what didn't...I would have told him, 'What you're doing, Mr. President, is going to bankrupt us.'" Now, Michael Isikoff, the Newsweek veteran who is best known for his investigative reporting on the Monica Lewinsky flap, is out with a lengthy report divulging "fresh details" on how the Obama administration relied on the designers of Romneycare in fashioning their own health-care law.
"Accountable care organizations" is the health wonk phrase du jour. Obamacare's advocates point to its support for ACOs as one of the important cost-control initiatives in the law. Except that, like nearly everything about Obamacare, the truth isn't so simple. It turns out that the government's idea of an accountable care organization is completely unworkable, to the point where nearly all leading health providers have declared it dead on arrival.
News outlets report on a variety of issues reflecting the insurance hassles patients sometimes face and the efforts by insurance companies to find profits in better-coordinated care.
People who receive medical care in an integrated health care system with electronic health records linked to its own pharmacy more often collect their new prescriptions for diabetes, cholesterol and high blood pressure medications than do people who receive care in a non-integrated system, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
The early round of briefs will focus on the core questions related to the individual mandate. Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that many insurers have profited from the health law -- despite their opposition to it.
The Eleventh Circuit has issued its ruling in State of Florida v US Department of Health and Human Services. It leaves much of health care reform intact, but has held one particular requirement -- "the individual mandate"- unconstitutional. The decision, while quite long, is well worth reading. There were three issues. The first was the extension of Medicaid. The state plaintiffs were arguing that they were effectively being coerced. The Court ruled they had plenty of time to adjust if they wanted to withdraw from Medicaid. So the extension of Medicaid eligibility is constitutional. The estimates are that the Medicaid extension will provide coverage to 9 million of the 50 million uninsured Americans by 2014 -- 17 million by 2017.
Laboratory Corporation of America® Holdings (LabCorp®) and Orchid Cellmark Inc., an international provider of DNA testing services primarily for forensic and family relationship applications, today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement and plan of merger under which LabCorp will acquire all of the outstanding shares of Orchid Cellmark in a cash tender offer for $2.80 per share for a total purchase price to stockholders and optionholders of approximately $85.4 million. Orchid Cellmark strengthens LabCorp's presence and strong brand name in identity testing in the US and establishes its presence in identity testing in the UK.
The health care law includes an estimated $105 billion in mandatory spending. Mandatory spending is controlled by laws other than annual appropriations acts. These mandatory funds could remain available for the Obama administration to spend even if Republicans manage to defund the health care law.
The Mayo Clinic says it will not be part of a critical piece of national health care reform under the government's proposed rules. The prestigious Rochester clinic is raising questions about accountable care organizations, or ACOs, which are supposed to be updated -- and better -- versions of health maintenance organizations. Approved as part of the 2010 health care law, they are designed to improve care and cuts costs by over half a billion dollars a year.
holds national seminars and consulting on medical insurance reimbursement including Medicare ICD9 CPT coding. Most seminars relate to a specific speciality
The Hill: Gov. Brown's Proposed Medicaid Cuts 'Untenable', California Dems Warn More than a dozen House Democrats from California met recently with Medicaid boss Donald Berwick to warn him that Gov. Jerry Brown's request for deep cuts to the state/federal program would devastate healthcare providers and their patients, The Hill has learned. Brown, a Democrat, has put the Obama administration in a tough spot with his request to cut the state's Medicaid program by $1.4 billion to help plug a $26.6 billion budget gap.
On average, Medicare Advantage premiums will be 4 percent lower in 2012 than in 2011, and plans project enrollment to increase by 10 percent, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced today. Of people with Medicare, 99.7 percent continue to enjoy access to a Medicare Advantage plan, and benefits remain consistent with those offered in 2011. This follows an earlier announcement that average prescription drug plan premiums will remain virtually unchanged in 2012.
Confirming many elderly patients' worst fears, a national study has shown that being hospitalized for an acute event, such as a stroke or hip fracture, can lead to long-term institutionalization in a nursing home. Equally alarming, researchers found that direct discharge to a skilled nursing facility -- a common practice designed to reduce hospital stays -- put patients at "extremely high risk" of needing long-term nursing home care.
The Obama administration says it has good news for seniors: The average monthly premium for Medicare's popular prescription plan won't go up next year.
In 2009, Medicare spending grew about 8 percent to over $502 billion and projections indicate growth at an average rate of nearly 6 percent per year through 2019. Powerful debates are under way in Washington on how to reduce Medicare spending. However, findings of a new study suggest that cutting Medicare spending across the board could result in poorer health outcomes for the elderly.
Five of Florida's major public and non-profit hospitals scored so poorly on return rates for Medicare patients that they will get preference this summer in a grant program to fix the problem, government documents show. They are Shands-Jacksonville, Florida Hospital System in Orlando, Miami's Jackson Health System, Memorial Regional in Hollywood and Orlando Regional. ... This means too many of the Medicare patients they discharged were readmitted a few days or weeks later to the same or another hospital.
Vidyo®, Inc., the first company to deliver personal telepresence, today announced that the Partners Healthcare Telestroke Program at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) - supporting 27 hospitals throughout Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine -- has deployed a revolutionary telemedicine communication and collaboration solution based on the company's award-winning platform. The Vidyo telehealth solution will be used for video conferencing and sharing data to enable specialists from MGH to examine patients at remote hospitals miles away to diagnose and recommend treatments. MGH selected Vidyo for the next stage of its telestroke program.
Microsoft Corp. today announced that people using the Google Health service, scheduled to be discontinued Jan. 1, 2012, can easily transfer their personal health information stored in a Google Health profile to a Microsoft HealthVault account using the Direct Project messaging protocols established by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. The Direct Project specifies a simple, scalable, standards-based way for participants to send authenticated, encrypted health information to known, trusted recipients over the Internet.
Microsoft is moving full-steam ahead with its healthcare push, while Google may be pulling back -- and possibly pulling out all together -- from the electronic medical records space.
At least one part of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul has proven popular. With the economy sputtering, the number of young adults covered by health insurance grew by about a million as families flocked to take advantage of a new benefit in the law.
MinuteClinic, the retail health care division of CVS Caremark, and OhioHealth, a nationally recognized not-for-profit, charitable health care organization based in Columbus, Ohio, have entered into a clinical affiliation that will enhance the high quality, affordable health care services they provide in central Ohio.
Recently, I published a piece arguing that the medical loss ratio (MLR) requirements of Obamacare would spell the end of the private, for-profit health insurance payer system in the United States and clear the way for universal, single-payer coverage provided by the federal government.
Over at National Review, I have a post entitled "Mitt Romney's Illogical, Terrible Health Care Address." The title is self-explanatory, if uncharitable. Basically the gist of it is, if the point of Romney's speech was to draw distinctions between Romneycare and Obamacare, it had the opposite effect. Here is an excerpt:
Trial lawyers in Wilmington NC, representing plaintiffs in personal injury, pharmaceutical claims, medical malpractice, nursing home negligence, wrongful death, chemical exposure, lead poisoning and other related litigation.
HP Enterprise Services today announced a five-year, $176 million services agreement with the Nevada Division of Health Care Financing and Policy to strengthen Medicaid operations and help position the state for healthcare reform.
Games, and particularly video games, have been found useful in medicine in diverse areas such as post stroke therapy, weight control, pain control during bandage changes on burn victims, and for education to teach people about their afflictions.
Although state tax collections are picking up after several brutal years, a new survey by the National Governors Association and the National Association of State Budget Officers found that states still expect to collect less tax revenue and spend less money in the coming fiscal year than they did before the Great Recession began. At the same time the cost of Medicaid, the biggest single portion of state spending, has been rising, driven up by higher enrollment as many people have lost their jobs and their health insurance.
The effects of The Patients Protection and Affordable Health Care Act have begun and Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield confirmed recently that they will eliminate most Small Group Health Plans in New York effective April 1, 2012. In addition, they will be slashing incentives for brokers to sell those products.
The Obama administration on Tuesday appealed a judge's ruling in Florida that struck down the landmark healthcare overhaul law as unconstitutional because it required Americans to buy healthcare insurance or face a penalty.
By allowing states the flexibility to make key decisions, the administration avoided a "political hot potato" regarding essential benefits -; the medical benefits insurers must cover under the U.S. health care.
Millions of seniors in popular private insurance plans offered through Medicare will be getting a reprieve from some of the most controversial cuts in President Obama's health care law.
Skilled nursing facilities whose patients are too frequently admitted to the hospital would face stiff new penalties according to the deficit reduction plan proposed by President Obama on Sept. 20. These admissions are often caused by falls, infections, or poor medication management.
As a boon to small business owners and individuals who will need to purchase health insurance in 2014, the current administration just gave States the right to choose what benefits policy holders will receive. Obama’s proposed new health care law has been widely challenged, as it has asked for a uniform set of benefits that must be provided by all insurers.
The powerful seniors lobby AARP stands to make more than a billion dollars over the next 10 years from the sale of supplemental Medicare policies under Obamacare, a House GOP report reveals. The report from Reps. Wally Herger, R-Calif., and Dave Reichert, R-Wash., alleges the Affordable Care Act will result in great demand for the Medigap policies that have the AARP stamp of approval, The Washington Post reported.
In a column about the revolving door between big government and the lobbying world, here's what the irreplaceable Tim Carney wrote about the waiver process for folks trying to escape the burden of government-run healthcare.
Obesity and depression both dramatically increase health care costs, but they mainly act separately, according to a study published in the November 2011 Journal of General Internal Medicine by Group Health Research Institute scientists.
Omega Healthcare Investors, Inc. (the "Company" or "Omega") today announced its results of operations for the three- and nine-month period ended September 30, 2011. The Company also reported Funds From Operations ("FFO") available to common stockholders for the three-month period ended September 30, 2011 of $44.5 million or $0.43 per common share.
Gingrich was taking basically the same position on Medicare he took 16 years ago, when, as speaker of the House, he was the commanding general of the Republican Revolution. ... Compared to today's Republican agenda, the Revolution of '94 now appears to be a halcyon period of moderation and good sense. Then, there was a hope that government-run Medicare would "wither on the vine" when recipients were offered alternatives. Now the plan is to pull the whole thing up by the roots (Dana Milbank, 5/17).
As part of Forbes.com's Human Ingenuity series, we ask staff writers, contributors and experts to weigh in with solutions to some of the nation's biggest problems. This month's focus is on reforming health care. We asked each to weigh in with one great idea for reducing costs while still providing high quality care.
Online long term care insurance quotes and rates from multiple insurance companies. We specialize in LTC insurance only and will quote up to 11 leading carriers.
Enforcing copyright law could potentially interfere with patient care, stifle innovation and discourage research, but using open source licensing instead can prevent the problem.
provides links to state programs for the elderly and low income, consumer information, general health insurance information and FAQs, and pages about specific health insurance plans.
The Osteopathic Heritage Foundations' $105 million award to Ohio University's College of Osteopathic Medicine represents the largest private donation ever given to a college or university in Ohio. This gift will be used to address some of the most pressing health care issues across the state and the nation - the impending shortage of primary care physicians and the diabetes epidemic.
President Barack Obama will welcome Democratic congressional leaders to the White House this week to discuss the continuing budget debate. Though the bipartisan deficit-reduction efforts led by Vice President Joe Biden focus on less politically charged issues, Obama's calls for long-term adjustments -- including changes to Medicare and Medicaid -- have left some Democrats nervous. Meanwhile, some Republicans have offered a budget vision of their own, which takes a very different approach to Medicare. Also, the Heritage Foundation has unveiled a plan of its own.
The new Medicare Prescription Drug Program - Medicare Part D - is making prescription drug coverage available to more than 40 million people across the country.
This family of companies offers health, disability and life insurance, as well as financial services. Includes a products overview, FAQs and access to customer service centers.
Today, Brian Lee, Executive Director of Families for Better Care, called the Government Accountability Office's (GAO) findings related to the quality of care in for-profit nursing homes acquired by private investment firms "predictably appalling."
There are a lot of people out there who think that, just because Medicaid is jointly run by the states and the feds, that states have a great deal of flexibility in how they administer the program. As Harold Pollack happily puts it in The New Republic, "In practice, states already enjoy great flexibility, with the Obama administration sending many signals that it is wiling to grant more."
The U.S. Senate voted 87-12 today to repeal the much-criticized law dramatically expanding the volume of 1099 forms that business have to send their customers. Approved earlier by the House, the bill goes to President Obama, who has indicated he will sign it even though it amounts to a big cut in the subsidies of his 2010 health care overhaul.
House Republicans sent new details to the Internal Revenue Service as part of an ongoing challenge to AARP's not-for-profit tax status, following the group's leading role in pushing for enactment of the 2010 federal healthcare overhaul. The latest allegations from Rep. Wally Herger, chairman of the Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, and other Republicans include the charge that the older Americans' advocacy group is not simply endorsing health insurance products but is improperly involved in the management of those plans.
Archives Of Internal Medicine: Medicare Expenditures Among Nursing Home Residents With Advanced Dementia -- Researchers followed 323 dementia patients in 22 nursing homes for up to 18 months and found that over an 18-month period, "total mean Medicare expenditures were $2303 per 90 days but were highly skewed; expenditures were less than $500 for 77.1% of the 90-day assessment periods and more than $12 000 for 5.5% of these periods. The largest proportion of Medicare expenditures were for hospitalizations (30.2%) and hospice (45.6%)." Patients who lived in a specialized care unit, did not have a feeding tube, or were under a do-not-hospitalize order had lower Medicare expenditures than others.
A new survey of hospice care in the United States says that the rapidly growing role of for-profit companies in providing end-of-life care for terminally ill patients raises serious concerns about whose interests are being served under such a commercial arrangement: those of shareholders or those of dying patients and their loved ones.
When safety net hospitals close or switch from not-for-profit to for-profit status, as quite a few did during the 1990s and early 2000s, certain vulnerable groups suffer disproportionately, a new study finds. For instance, uninsured pregnant women, who often use public transportation, had to travel further to give birth after such closures or conversions, their average trip increasing from seven miles to 10 to 13 miles.
States spend up to $15 billion a year in medical expenses related to obesity, according to a new study by researchers at RTI International, Duke University, and the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Orion Health, the leader in health information exchange and healthcare integration solutions, a faith-based, not-for-profit health system in Jacksonville, Fla., has selected Orion Health HIE to connect disparate software systems and enable enterprise-wide sharing of clinical data as well as communications with community physicians.
Medicare coverage and nationwide utilization of computed tomographic colonography, commonly referred to as virtual colonoscopy, has tripled in recent years, according to a study in the April issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology. CTC employs virtual reality technology to produce a three-dimensional visualization that permits a thorough and minimally invasive evaluation of the entire colon and rectum. CT colonography is an alternative to conventional optical colonoscopy for colorectal cancer screening and diagnosis.
An estimated 9.3 million American adults lost health insurance coverage as a result of increased unemployment during the recession of 2007-09, according to a newly published study by researchers at Cornell, Indiana and Carnegie Mellon universities.
The legal fight over President Obama's health care overhaul will apparently go through normal legal channels after the Supreme Court on Monday announced it will not expedite a major lawsuit from Virginia challenging the controversial law.
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a challenge to President Obama's signature law on health care, it said Monday in an announcement that has nearly as much impact on partisan politics as the final decision has on the law itself.
The U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether a state can stop pharmacies from sharing information on doctors' prescription-writing practices with drug companies.
Streamline Health Solutions, Inc., a leading provider of enterprise document management and revenue cycle solutions for healthcare organizations, today announced two major developments for its AccessAnyWare document management solution.
Wow. Philip Klein points us to this AP story, in which Richard Foster, Chief Actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, says that, due to a glitch in Obamacare, married couples of early retirees making around $64,000 a year will become eligible for Medicaid. According to Foster, as many as 3 million Americans will qualify for the benefit. It's "a twist government number crunchers say they discovered only after the complex bill was signed."
WellAWARE Systems, the developer of breakthrough technology designed to enable proactive and preventive Elder care, today announced a new partnership with international not-for-profit organization, The Eden Alternative. Founded by board certified geriatrician and international Elder care expert, Dr. Bill Thomas, The Eden Alternative is driven by a person-directed care philosophy to improve the well-being of Elders and their caregivers.
The Obama administration strongly desires that all medical records be electronic. There's a much-lauded app called drchrono for the iPad which can make that transition happen. Logically, the government will toss up to $44,000 to any doctor willing to use it.
In the July/August issue of The American Spectator, I've penned an article entitled, "Medicare Reform: Who Decides?" in which I point out that, contrary to distortions on both sides, both Republicans and Democrats have voted for significant reductions in the growth of Medicare spending:
According to a new study by the Center for Studying Health System Change, the pattern isn't new but is picking up speed in the quest to increase market share and revenue.
The cost of health insurance continues to climb for U.S. companies and workers, with annual family premiums this year growing at a pace triple that of 2010 and outpacing wage increases, according to a survey.
U.S. community hospitals billed insurance companies and federal and state programs $1.2 trillion in 2008 for inpatient care, according to the latest News and Numbers from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. This represents a 28 percent increase over the $900 billion, adjusted for inflation, billed in 2004.
Researchers from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and Providence Health & Services have found that expanding low income adults' access to Medicaid substantially increases health care use, reduces financial strain on covered individuals, and improves their self-reported health and well-being. This is the first study to evaluate the impact of insuring the uninsured in the U.S. using a randomized controlled trial, the gold standard in medical and scientific studies.
The Veterans Affairs Department, which operates one of the largest medical systems in the world, is moving ahead with plans to modernize its electronic health- records using open-source software. ... U.S. hospitals and medical practices are preparing to digitize their health records, often using commercial products. ... The department's electronic health-records system is used in 153 VA hospitals and more than 800 outpatient clinics in the U.S.
WageWorks, Inc., a leading on-demand provider of tax-advantaged programs for consumer-directed health, commuter and other employee spending account benefits, is pleased to announce the launch of its new EZ Receipts™ mobile application ("EZ Receipts") for use by WageWorks' participants on their smartphones and other mobile devices. EZ Receipts is the next generation of tools from WageWorks designed to completely change the way people interact with and use their healthcare and dependent care flexible spending accounts.
There's been a flurry of mergers in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries lately. My Manhattan Institute colleague Paul Howard has some thoughts on one of the more interesting potential transactions: the hostile bid for Illumina, a genetic diagnostics company, by Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche.
The White House meeting on Wednesday was expected to focus on the debt limit fight, but instead got caught up in the dispute over Medicare. Following the session, Representative Paul D. Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who is chairman of the Budget Committee, said he asked Mr. Obama to not engage in demagogy about the Republicans' Medicare plan, which was under fierce attack from Democrats as essentially being a voucher program for older Americans.
There was a lot of talk this week about a new survey from Towers Watson, a corporate human resources research company, that suggested more and more workers are going to find themselves without company-sponsored health insurance even after the new health law takes effect beginning in 2014.
Long-time readers of this blog will know that my favorite health policy topic is the Swiss health care system. So I was glad to see Megan McArdle, Tyler Cowen, and Ezra Klein devote some space to the topic on Monday, provoked by Paul Krugman's fact-free claim that "consumer-based medicine has been a bust everywhere it has been tried." (Indeed, as Tyler and Ezra point out, Krugman once praised Obamacare as a "plan to Swissify America," arguing that "a Swiss-style system of universal coverage would be a vast improvement on what we have now.")
It’s often difficult to know how some of the great fallacies aimed at discrediting the Affordable Care Act manage to get started--but get started they do.
David Hogberg of Investor's Business Daily has uncovered another "quirk" in Obamacare, one with significant consequences. It turns out that millions of lower-income people who thought they were going to get coverage through Obamacare's insurance exchanges may not. "There is this technical problem in the law," Vanderbilt Law School professor James Blumstein told Hogberg. "I don't see how you get around that."