Regular Feature news and information

Vermont may have a reputation as a small, laid-back state best known for maple syrup and Ben & Jerry's ice cream, but the task facing Lindsey Tucker is almost as large as the state's Green Mountains. The deputy commissioner of the state's health insurance exchange, Vermont Health Connect, faces the...
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Some see the stars aligning for a once-in-a-lifetime shift in the way clinicians are paid. But the future physician payment system could end up looking a lot like the past.
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Abuse of prescription painkillers causes more fatalities than heroin and cocaine combined. Yet efforts to stop the Medicare fraud that puts drugs on the black market aren't working as they should.
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When Dr. Ruth Parker talks to providers about the need to focus on health literacy, she rarely encounters anyone who doesn't agree that it's an issue with serious implications for healthcare outcomes.
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Some of the nation's largest for-profit hospital chains are sitting on mounting cash piles, suggesting to analysts that a wave of dealmaking may be in the offing.
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In 1980, armed with an aptitude for science, Dawn Endris was 19 years old and had her career path already chosen. “I always wanted to get into nursing,” she recalls.
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Both providers and payers have been saying for years that personalized medicine will radically alter the way that cancer patients receive care.
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For the colleges and universities that train the next generation of healthcare leaders, health reform's wave of new regulation and market activity has prompted new faculty hires and new curricula.
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Worries about low state Medicaid rates are growing as at least 25 states appear poised to undertake a historic broadening of their Medicaid programs' eligibility, according to health policy experts.
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The popular notion in healthcare is that the most aggressive fraud hunters—known as “zone program integrity contractors,” or ZPICs—focus on small players. That idea is wrong.
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