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Posts tagged: Top Stories - Dose
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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Stephen Nuckolls, CEO of Coastal Carolina Health Care, New Bern, N.C., shared some lessons at the Medical Group Management Association annual conference yesterday from his organization's experience in running a Medicare accountable care organization. He said that when his organization was forming its 50-provider accountable care organization, hiring a consultant was money well-spent, but outsourcing the staff of its after-hours call center was not. The consultant offered concrete steps to advance the ACO goal of keeping people out of the hospital and emergency department. But the employees of the contracted call center company worked against that goal.
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Months after the latest trial of a possible HIV vaccine were halted because it was ineffective, newly published details suggest researchers and advocates made important strides with some the country's hardest-hit and difficult-to-reach populations. The study, published in the Oct. 7 online issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, found the two-year trial of an experimental HIV vaccine did not prevent HIV among participants, with 41 cases of infection among those who received the vaccine compared with 30 cases among those who took the placebo.
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The government shutdown isn't stopping Food and Drug Administration advisory committee meetings scheduled this month, according to drug and device manufacturers. Some analysts warned that the shutdown could limit the FDA's panel discussions, postpone meetings and ultimately delay product launches and spook investors.
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Three winners will split more than $3 million in prize money offered by the Veterans Affairs Department to upgrade the scheduling software module of its VistA electronic health-record system. The $1,825,000 first-prize winner is a consortium of MedRed, a Washington, D.C.-based software development company; BT Americas, an IT services company based in El Segundo, Calif.; and the VistA Expertise Network, a programmer's network based in Seattle. Its entry, Health eTime, has been under development since last fall solely for the contest, said Krishna Dave, contract manager for MedRed. Whether the software will become part of VistA, and whether it will be proprietary or free and open source has yet to be determined, Dave said. “We are waiting for some guidance from the VA on what the next steps are, whether there will be procurement,” she said.
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Three winners will split more than $3 million in prize money offered by the Veterans Affairs Department to upgrade the scheduling software module of its VistA electronic health-record system. The $1,825,000 first-prize winner is a consortium of MedRed, a Washington, D.C.-based software development company; BT Americas, an IT services company based in El Segundo, Calif.; and the VistA Expertise Network, a programmer's network based in Seattle. Its entry, Health eTime, has been under development since last fall solely for the contest, said Krishna Dave, contract manager for MedRed. Whether the software will become part of VistA, and whether it will be proprietary or free and open source has yet to be determined, Dave said. “We are waiting for some guidance from the VA on what the next steps are, whether there will be procurement,” she said.
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