Laura is the vice president of content for The American Journal of Managed Care® (AJMC®) and all its brands, including The American Journal of Accountable Care®, Evidence-Based Oncology™, and The Center for Biosimilars®. She has been working on AJMC® since 2014 and has been with AJMC®’s parent company, MJH Life Sciences®, since 2011.
She has an MA in business and economic reporting from New York University. You can connect with Laura on LinkedIn or Twitter.
Patients Overly Optimistic About the Benefits of Treatments, Tests, Screening
January 1st 2015Patients have a naïve optimism about medical care. A new study in JAMA found that patients have an unrealistic expectation of the benefits and harms of common medical treatments, tests, and screens.
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Two-Thirds of States Have Little Physician Quality Information Available
December 31st 2014Only a few states have readily available information on the quality of physician care, according to the second annual State Report Card on Transparency of Physician Quality Information from the Health Care Incentives Improvement Institute.
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Material Need Insecurities Associated With Diabetes Control, Healthcare Utilization
December 31st 2014Simply increasing access to care is not enough to improve the health of patients with diabetes mellitus as a new study in JAMA has also associated the difficulty of paying for food and medications with poor diabetes control.
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The Year in Review: Most-Read Stories of 2014
December 30th 2014With 2014 coming to a close, The American Journal of Managed Care is taking a look back at the most popular articles from this year. These most-read articles highlight the healthcare issues most important to providers, insurers, and policy makers.
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Accenture Wins Renewed Contract to Continue Work on HealthCare.gov
December 30th 2014After website glitches stole the spotlight during the first open enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act, CMS hired Accenture to fix HealthCare.gov. Now, the consulting firm has been awarded a 5-year, $563 million contract to continue working on the website.
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Health IT-Related Adverse Event Reporting Needs Improvement
December 30th 2014Improved and standardized reporting across healthcare organizations is needed to better understand the impact of health information technology (IT) on adverse events, according to a report from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT.
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Remaining Gaps Between Patient and Provider Outlook on Healthcare
December 25th 2014Consumers, administrators, primary care physicians and specialists all agree: they do not think that the healthcare system is on the right track, according to a study from Booz Allen Hamilton and Ipsos Public Affairs.
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Marketplace Premiums, Deductibles Flat Year Over Year
December 25th 2014Marketplace health insurance premiums across the nation did not increase from 2014 to 2015. However, while the overall costs were flat, some states did see substantial average premium increases, which were offset by declines in other states.
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Report Highlights Gaps in Nation's Ability to Respond to Disease Outbreaks
December 23rd 2014The Ebola outbreak exposed some serious gaps in the nation's ability to manage severe infectious disease threats with half of the country scoring low on key indicators related to preventing, detecting, diagnosing, and responding to outbreaks.
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More Than Half of Eligible Professionals Facing Penalties Under Meaningful Use Program
December 18th 2014In the next several weeks more than 257,000 physicians and other healthcare providers will receive notification that 1% of their pay next year will be penalized for failing to meet meaningful use, CMS announced Wednesday.
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Patients in Consumer-Driven Health Plans More Involved in Their Healthcare
December 17th 2014Although just 15% of the US population is enrolled in a consumer-driven health plan, these individuals are more involved in their healthcare, according to a new report from the Employee Benefit Research Institute.
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HHS Rewards States for Efforts to Transform Care
December 17th 2014States designing and testing healthcare payment and service delivery models to improve quality of care and lower costs will be receiving more than $665 million in funding from the government, according to HHS Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell.
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Tennessee Announces Medicaid Expansion Option
December 15th 2014Tennessee became the latest Republican-led state to gain approval for a Medicaid expansion option when Gov Bill Haslam unveiled the Insure Tennessee plan Monday morning. There are just 20 states left that have not expanded Medicaid.
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Monitoring Drug Safety in the Age of Big Data
December 14th 2014Healthcare databases may allow for greater access to real-world medical data, but they can become a risk to patients and healthcare systems if they are not considered carefully, according to a study published in Current Epidemiology Reports.
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Influence of Socioeconomic Status, Race on 30-Day Readmission Rates
December 11th 2014A new report has validated concerns that CMS readmission penalty models do not factor in socioeconomic and race factors and therefore unfairly penalize hospitals caring for low-income, uninsured, and vulnerable populations.
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States Offer Poor Access for Medicaid Managed Care Networks, OIG Report Finds
December 10th 2014As Medicaid enrollment grows under the program's expansion, there are not enough providers to serve the increased amounts of enrollees, according to a new report from the Office of the Inspector General that measured the availability of specific providers in Medicaid managed care networks.
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Americans Dread Health Insurance Shopping Despite Exchange Improvement
December 9th 2014The federal government may have made strides to improve the health insurance exchanges since last year's open enrollment, but a majority of Americans view shopping for health insurance as just as bad as or worse than doing their taxes.
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