Health Care Delivery

The health reform key is in, but the implementation ignition just won't start.

Two bills could expand the roles of nurse practitioners and pharmacists in California, as experts debate the scope of care they should provide in clinical settings.

Hospitals across the nation are being swept up in the biggest wave of mergers since the 1990s, a development that is creating giant hospital systems that could one day dominate American health care and drive up costs.

Although healthcare insurance exchange (HIE) enrollment is intended for October 1 of this year, residents of Oregon will have to wait a bit longer to do it themselves.

Like their predecessors in health care's parade of acronyms -- HMOs and MCOs -- ACOs will need to balance quality patient care with saving money. When that balance is questioned by consumers and inevitably by the courts, how, exactly, will the risk be shared?

Urgent care centers, the walk-in clinics where people can go when they have a cold or a sprained ankle, have been popping up in strip malls and on street corners across the country.

Preventive health services are key to ensuring people seek care before their conditions are critical or urgent in nature. As healthcare services for Medicaid and Medicare beneficiaries expand under the Affordable Care Act, so will the need for professionals who can administer certain preventive measures.

Wade M. Aubry, MD, associate clinical professor, University of California, San Francisco, continues discussions saying that comparative effectiveness research (CER) and the evolution of evidence-based medicine can facilitate innovations under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), especially with the inclusion of value-based insurance design (VBID).

Affordable Care Act funds 'navigators' to aid consumers, but advocates say new state laws could hamper their effectiveness

In an effort to offset cost increases associated with the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Obama administration intends to expand hospitals' access of the 340B discount drug plan. While the expansion may sound promising to some, many others worry that the program will threaten the quality of care, as increased participation risks higher potential for abuse. Even worse, the 340B program will likely rise the cost of cancer care.

Older members of Congress and those who smoke, like Speaker John A. Boehner, could be facing much higher health insurance premiums under a new official interpretation of President Obama's health care law.

The Obama administration hopes to attract more than 2.5 million young, healthy people to enroll through the health insurance exchanges that open on Oct. 1.

A provision of the Affordable Care Act went into effect on August 1st that will require physicians and medical companies to disclose their financial relationships.

Delaying the employer insurance mandate until 2015 has cost the government an estimated $12 billion in fees. This coming after an assessment conducted by The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) on the impact the delay will have on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) implementation.

Increasing enrollment in health insurance is one of the primary goals of the health reform law. The CMS took a major step to achieve that this week by signing agreements with five Web-based insurance broker firms to help enroll Americans in the insurance exchanges in the 35 states where the federal government will run them.

At the heart of Washington, government workers are concerned about what healthcare reform will mean for them. A mandate in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will require Congress members and their aids to obtain health insurance coverage through the state exchange marketplace.

Florida and Georgia, two states where politicians oppose U.S. President Barack Obama's healthcare law, said on Tuesday that insurance rates for individuals would rise sharply in 2014 under the reform.

On this day in 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Medicare program into law. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has played a significant role in how the Medicare program operates as healthcare continues to be reformed.

A growing number of Medicaid managed-care insurers have received approval from state regulators and state insurance exchange officials to enroll non-Medicaid members on the exchanges in October, marking the first time these specialized insurers will offer health coverage to the general public.

The Affordable Care Act will expand Medicaid eligibility starting in 2014, but a Supreme Court ruling that there will be no penalty for those states refusing to comply, or who later withdraw from the program, has left many state legislators questioning how to proceed.

The head of a major ObamaCare enrollment group urged Texans to embrace their new benefits under healthcare reform as a means to stay "healthy and financially secure."