Doctors asked to assess options for reducing healthcare costs were not exactly enthusiastic about replacing the system that pays them based on the volume of tests, exams and procedures they perform.
Granted, cuts to Medicare physician pay proved even less popular among the nearly 3,000 doctors surveyed on their opinions for strategies to blunt the nation's high and rising healthcare costs. Just 1% of the polled physicians described their attitude toward this option as “very enthusiastic.”
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New York insurance regulators today approved rates for health plan offerings on the state insurance exchange in 2014 that they say are on average more than 50% less than premiums for currently available individual-market plans.
For example, for an individual seeking coverage in Manhattan on the New York Health Benefit Exchange in 2014, a standard HMO Aetna plan that currently has a premium of $1,409 a month would cost $688 for an Aetna gold-tier plan.
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It's enough to make your head spin. Estimated costs for visits to hospital emergency departments for dizziness-related complaints exceed $4 billion a year, according to a new study.
Dizziness and vertigo are the chief symptoms presented by 3.9 million—or about 4%—of all emergency department patients, Johns Hopkins University researchers report
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There was good news and bad news in a new study on the costs versus benefits of electronic health-record use in ambulatory care.
First the good news. The adoption and use of EHRs by physicians in three Massachusetts communities appears to have reduced cost growth. Use of EHRs coincided with costs that were $5.14 per patient per month lower than projected, compared with a control group, according to a report appearing July 16 online in JAMA Internal Medicine.
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It comes as no surprise to many observers that regional health information exchanges are struggling financially.
Research published this week in Health Affairs concluded that “there is a substantial risk that many current efforts to promote health information exchange will fail.”
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More ailing joints, hearts and other chronic medical conditions may be to blame for higher spending by Medicare in some communities compared with others, new research suggests.
The study, published by the journal Health Services Research, analyzed Medicare spending across 60 communities for two acute conditions and eight chronic conditions, including heart disease, diabetes and joint degeneration in the knee, lower leg, neck or back.
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Instantaneous eligibility determination for exchange subsidies or Medicaid will not happen on Oct. 1 because of the Obama administration's decision to put off for one year requiring employers to report their employee health coverage, as well as a CMS-proposed rule published Friday loosening verification of individuals' income for the purpose of federal insurance subsidies.
In 2014, eligibility evaluations for premium tax credits and Medicaid eligibility will be based on the “honor system,” and will be performed manually by the state exchanges, rather than being based on IRS data provided to the exchanges through the new federal data hub. Experts say this will increase staff costs to manually determine eligibility. And it may increase fraud as well, thus costing the federal government more in premium subsidies.
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Patients are more likely to fill prescriptions that treat costly, chronic diseases when health insurers offer them a financial incentive to do so through value-based insurance design. That's the good news in a research review just published by the journal Health Affairs.
The bad news? Research has yet to show any significant drop in overall medical spending, wrote authors of the review, which examined prior studies of value-based design and proper medication use.
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Being a cardiologist in the 21st century means knowing that your Medicare claims are likely to get a lot of scrutiny. So cardiologists have to pay a lot more attention to documenting what they do in the electronic health record.
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States are poised to go on a health insurance exchange spending spree with money in the bank from the federal government.
As Republicans in Congress continue to gripe about spending on the health reform law, a new Government Accountability Office report found that although HHS has awarded around $3.7 billion to states to help establish health insurance exchanges, just over 10% of it—$380 million—had been spent as of March. Around 80% of that $380 million was spent on contracts and consulting, most of which went toward building out information technology systems.
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Watch out, community hospitals. The proposed merger between Tenet Healthcare Corp. and Vanguard Health Systems is expected to increase pressure on already-struggling stand-alone facilities in the markets where the two chains operate.
While the deals, Moody's Investors Service says the combination of two “large and powerful systems” will be a force to be reckoned with. In particular, Tenet will have more leverage to lure physicians away from smaller hospitals and will be able to take advantage of back-office economies of scale that will help reduce costs at a time of shrinking reimbursement and increased pressure on volumes.
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