Maryland news and information

An ambitious plan to revamp Maryland's unusual system of setting hospital prices would create and enforce a cap on hospital spending growth. In so doing, the state may push providers to address the other driver of rising healthcare costs: how often and where medical care is delivered.
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Help for consumers who want to purchase health insurance plans through the new exchanges will be coming to Georgia this year in the form of paid “navigators” earning from $20 to $38 an hour.
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It's taken years for Dr. Ronald Sroka, a Crofton, Md., primary care physician, to hone his skill at prescribing what he considers the right medications. His patients' insurance companies may not agree. And in what's called “step therapy,” those insurers can also refuse to pay for drugs...
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President Barack Obama used his weekend radio address to push for including an assault weapons ban in gun legislation now before Congress.
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A study that looked at scope-of-practice laws in six states concluded that the laws don't restrict the breadth of primary-care services that nurse practitioners offer patients, but the laws still affect payer policies which then curtail how and where NPs can practice.
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The Maryland State Medical Society is setting up a new resource to help keep private practice physicians in their offices. The Center for the Private Practice of Medicine aims to be a tool for independent physicians to get help with office management, health information technology, billing and...
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The suburban Maryland hospital formerly known as St. Joseph Medical Center, which already has a corporate integrity agreement with the government, agreed to pay nearly $5 million to settle new allegations involving short inpatient stays.
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LifeBridge Health, a three-hospital not-for-profit provider based in Baltimore, has named Tressa Springmann as CIO.
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Dr. Gene Green was named president of Bethesda, Md.'s Suburban Hospital, a member of Johns Hopkins Medicine.
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States expanding their Medicaid programs must broaden Medicaid eligibility to the full extent laid out in the reform law in order to get full federal matching funds to help pay for the new coverage.
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