All News

Hospital CEOs' pay isn't linked to their hospital's benefit to the community. Nor is it linked to the quality of care the hospital provides, a new study found.

The success of accountable care organizations (ACOs) and patient-centered medical homes (PCMHs) will depend upon physicians who embrace the concept of managing care across the care continuum and leading teams of professionals committed to evidence-based medicine while delivering on continuous quality improvement.

Asthma - the most common chronic disease that affects Americans of all ages, about 40 million people - can usually be well controlled with drugs. But being able to afford prescription medications in the United States often requires top-notch insurance or plenty of disposable income, and time to hunt for deals and bargains.

The disparities in the costs of care are obvious and just one of the reasons reform is needed in healthcare. For those managing chronic conditions like asthma, prescription drug costs seem to only be rising.

The U.S. administration has a little over a month to fix the technology problems crippling its online health insurance marketplace, or jeopardize the goal of signing up millions of Americans in time for benefits under President Barack Obama's healthcare law, experts said on Thursday.

Some major health insurers, including Aetna, WellPoint and Humana, have reduced patient cost-sharing for preventive drugs out of a growing realization that lowering cost-sharing increases patient compliance with drug therapies, improving outcomes and cutting the total cost of care.

ACOs are groups of providers that have been assigned a projected budget per patient. If the cost of caring for the patient comes in below that level, the group shares the savings. The idea is that doctors will better coordinate care to prevent wasteful or ineffective treatment. Pilot programs suggest the jury is still out on ACOs' ability to drive this kind of behavior.

The nation's largest health plans say they are rapidly moving toward transparency and away from paying doctors and hospitals on a fee-for-service basis, four insurance executives said this morning at Forbes Healthcare Summit 2013.

Expansion or not, it is obvious that states must consider how to make their Medicaid programs more sustainable.

A few weeks ago, Novo Nordisk ($NVO) said it had lost Express Scripts' business on two of its top drugs, Victoza and NovoLog. Well, that was just part of the action at the pharmacy benefits manager.

It's been barely a week since Farzad Mostashari, M.D., turned in his keycard for the Hubert H. Humphrey Building as well as his government-issued mobile phone, so the former head of ONC still has keen insight into the minds of federal regulators.

The future of healthcare is shaping into something that looks like it is out of a science-fiction movie: electronic health records, E-prescriptions, big data, and cutting-edge technologies being used in the patient procedures. So why are the healthcare insurance exchanges relying on stone-age processes?

It is commonly said that the US spends more than twice as much on health care as other developed countries, yet its outcomes are worse. The inference is that too much care is provided, to no good end.

Federal officials say they have identified and can fix the biggest flaws in their online insurance marketplace after an inaugural week marked by system outages and long wait times.

Hospitals spend less on operations-largely by squeezing labor costs-to make up for lost revenue when Medicare cuts hospital prices, according to a study.

Beyond the online marketplaces and networks of health systems seeking to meet the influx of newly insured, are the individuals who will be providing patient care. By 2020, the Association of American Medical Colleges estimates that there will be a 90,000 shortage in physicians. To fill that provider gap, many are looking to the physician assistant (PA) workforce.

Most Americans don't want the government to decide if medical treatments are economical before letting patients use them, a new survey suggests.

In five markets around the country, accountable care organizations were providing care to more than half the Medicare patients in the traditional fee-for-service program, a new study found. In addition, ACOs were more likely to be found in markets with greater consolidation by hospitals and doctors.

In the past few years, efforts to lower costs and improve care have proliferated.

Ignore the inevitable startup glitches. The new health-insurance exchanges will work just fine -- in the sense that all government health-care programs work: Many people will ultimately become dependent on them for coverage. That won't mean the exchanges have fulfilled their promise, however.

Practitioners, payers, and patients alike increasingly recognize the need for the PCMH in the United States, especially as reform efforts seek to control costs and improve quality of care delivery.

There's a Medicare prescription-drug coverage abyss that is playfully referred to as the "doughnut hole," though there is nothing sweet or amusing about it.

Many healthcare providers and payers are moving forward with patient-centered medical homes to improve primary care and care coordination and reduce costs, despite mixed research evidence of the cost-effectiveness of this major delivery system reform.

As the government shutdown drags on, patients and providers are feeling the strain.

Federal and state officials moved Wednesday to strengthen the computer underpinnings of the new online health exchanges, which proved inadequate to handle a flood of consumer inquiries that began as soon as the system opened on Tuesday and continued into the next day.

From the Physician Quality Reporting System's aim to boost quality measures reporting to the potential for accountable care organizations to transform care delivery, this brief sheds light on these and other key ACA provisions impacting cancer care.

ONC watchers in the healthcare industry and media alike now have their answer to what exactly outgoing national coordinator Farzad Mostashari, MD, will do now.

Having access to a computer and the Internet may seem like a basic commodity for most Americans, but for the economically challenged, this is not always the case.

Hospitals will be paid nearly the same rates by health plans sold through new state insurance exchanges as by plans sold to employers outside them, say analysts and hospital system executives.

The merger wave sweeping up Massachusetts hospitals and doctors threatens to increase health care prices and widen the payment gap between providers, according to warnings from industry leaders, health insurers, and regulators at a hearing Wednesday.