Maryland news and information

One of the insurance industry's medical home experiments has slowed costs and significantly lifted quality scores in its second year of operation, raising hopes for pilot programs initiated under the 2010 healthcare reform legislation.
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The state suspended the medical licenses of three doctors at abortion clinics accused by state regulators of putting women's health at risk—including one case in which a woman died.
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With details for insurance exchanges still in the works, navigator organizations are starting to hire staff while also fending off concerns over conflicts of interest and the potential for fraud.
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Rhode Island policymakers and the state's healthcare industry began to draft plans last month on how best to overhaul payment to hospitals, doctors and other providers and simultaneously improve the health and well-being of its citizens.
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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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