Two new studies highlight the heavy impact that state decisions not to expand Medicaid under the federal healthcare reform law will have on low-income Americans and community health centers that serve them.
Across the country, about 5.2 million low-income uninsured adults across the country will remain uninsured in 2014 because they fall into a coverage gap in the 25 states that so far have not expanded Medicaid to adults with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty level, according to a new report from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Read more »
It's not easy to start a movement, but a new group of physicians and healthcare researchers are hoping to do so. They are looking to the Institute of Medicine to bolster their efforts to reduce diagnosis errors that lead to delayed or inappropriate treatments.
“It's affecting hundreds of thousands of people a year, but it gets very little attention from healthcare organizations and physicians in general,” said Dr. Mark Graber, founder and president of the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine. “We haven't encountered any pushback, it's more just apathy.”
Read more »
St. Jude Medical paid about $123 million to acquire a developer of small, leadless cardiac pacemakers not yet approved in the U.S. The deal follows St. Jude's 2011 recall of leads for two of its pacemakers.
The deal with Nanostim, an early-stage medical-device company based in Milpitas, Calif., has been in the works for several years.
Read more »
What not-for-profit hospitals pay their CEOs has little to do with financial performance or quality scores, but the top executives generally make more at hospitals with expensive technology and high marks in patient satisfaction, according to a new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
The researchers drew data on 1,877 CEOs overseeing 2,691 hospitals from the Form 990 their organization submitted to the IRS for the 2009 tax year.
Read more »
While the patient-centered medical home has been touted as the foundation for a better coordinated and more efficient healthcare system, experts now say medical home practices need to be connected to other parts of the healthcare system. To this end, the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative has released a report listing 10 “essential” health information technology tools needed to make these population health connections.
Read more »
The College of Health Information Management Executives' 2013 Fall CIO Forum wrapped up Friday in Scottsdale, Ariz., with a spate of announcements and award presentations.
CHIME used the forum to ballyhoo the cutting-edge work of two healthcare organizations and two health information technology developers. It presented Sutter Health, Sacramento, Calif., with its Innovator of the Year Award for equipping its clinical workforce with 1,000 mobile tablets for use in home health and hospice locations across northern California.
Read more »
Mostashari
Health information technology leaders have a lot on their plates today and more to come—implementing systems to match the federal IT incentive payment program upgrades, satisfying auditors roaming the land, meeting privacy constraints and preparing for the switch to a huge set of updated diagnostic and procedural codes.
Read more »
A credit analyst for not-for-profit healthcare providers is cautioning that the new state health insurance exchanges may introduce more short-term risk than benefit.
Moody's Investors Service said in a report Friday that while the exchanges may lead to a bump in the number of insured patients, the larger unknowns will be what happens with insurance contract terms; the potential migration of patients who currently have private insurance to exchange plans; and bad debt for patients.
Read more »
Many people visiting the federal government's health insurance marketplace in 36 states complained that they couldn't window-shop for health plans without creating an account.
But visitors to the glitch-plagued HealthCare.gov site now can bypass the temperamental application interface and compare plans anonymously, as some of the state-run exchanges previously made possible. HHS added the feature Thursday, following 10 days marked by system outages and lengthy wait times.
Read more »
Online reviews posted by customers have cast physicians under the same criticisms normally reserved for restaurants, and it turns out a majority of doctors pay close attention to those appraisals.
About 85% of physicians proactively monitor online reviews about themselves, according to a survey conducted by ZocDoc, the online physician appointment hub. ZocDoc received answers in July from 360 physicians.
Read more »
Online reviews posted by customers have cast physicians under the same criticisms normally reserved for restaurants, and it turns out a majority of doctors pay close attention to those appraisals.
About 85% of physicians proactively monitor online reviews about themselves, according to a survey conducted by ZocDoc, the online physician appointment hub. ZocDoc received answers in July from 360 physicians.
Read more »
