A vast majority of surveyed healthcare leaders say healthcare quality and efficiency will improve only with fundamental change, and among their priorities are strengthening the primary-care system, encouraging greater coordination of care and moving...
As the political debate over the nation’s healthcare crisis becomes increasingly polarized, it is tempting to believe that there are only two mutually exclusive paths before us. One proposal argues broadly for greater government involvement in order...
The “medical home,” a practice-based structure to facilitate the delivery of comprehensive care and to promote strong relationships between patients and their primary-care physician-led teams, has real momentum in healthcare today. Channeling and...
The credit crunch roiling the nation’s economy is at least partially challenging the notion that hospitals are immune from economic downturns. While some hospitals are still enjoying high volumes and cushy operating margins, many nevertheless are...
Registered nurses outnumber doctors 4-to-1 in the nation’s workforce, but have been largely overlooked by efforts to hold providers accountable for costly and harmful errors. Not anymore.
Federal auditors said that the CMS overstepped its authority when it issued tighter enrollment requirements for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program last August, and that the agency should have first released it as a proposed rule rather...
The credit crunch roiling the nation’s economy is at least partially challenging the notion that hospitals are immune from economic downturns. While some hospitals are still enjoying high volumes and cushy operating margins, many nevertheless are...
Hospitals would have to work a lot harder to earn their Medicare paychecks for the inpatient services they provide under a proposed rule the CMS issued last week.
A steady sell-off of provider-owned health plans in recent months suggests two factors converging—that providers are feeling the pain of running managed-care plans amid a tightening market while larger competitors remain eager to gain membership and...
Providers and their lawyers liked what they heard last week from HHS Inspector General Daniel Levinson: Those who do a prompt and comprehensive job telling on themselves for fraud and abuse violations are likely to be rewarded with faster resolution...
A 4.6% decline in disciplinary actions by the nation’s medical boards in 2007 shouldn’t set off any alarms, according to one medical board official, but the head of a watchdog group called the decrease “very troubling.”
A tentative settlement between the University of Southern California and Tenet Healthcare Corp. over the fate of USC University Hospital looks to be an addition of cash and a subtraction of a headache for Dallas-based Tenet. The company, however,...
The Joint Commission and its affiliate Joint Commission Resources again have followed up an accreditation-related move with a new product that aims to make money consulting on standards implementation.
Registered nurses outnumber doctors 4-to-1 in the nation’s workforce, but have been largely overlooked by efforts to hold providers accountable for costly and harmful errors. Not anymore.
One of the most interesting books of the year so far is The Three Trillion Dollar War, an analysis of the cost of the Iraq conflict by Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and public finance expert Linda Bilmes of Harvard University.
As part of its mission to improve the health and quality of life for the people and communities it serves, the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System is implementing an integrated clinical information system across its 15 hospitals. The new...
More than 450 organizations in all 50 states participated in the first National Healthcare Decisions Day on April 16, to raise awareness about the importance of advance directives on end-of-life decisions.
