When the National Institutes of Health received a $299 million increase in the fiscal 2012 omnibus bill enacted in mid-December, many patient, provider and industry advocacy groups celebrated.
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Providers are telling Modern Healthcare this week about the biggest potential upsides and downsides stemming from their organizations' participation in the Pioneer ACO program. Here are some highlights:
Dr. Mark Girard, president of Steward Health Care Network, says his organization is betting that the changes it has undertaken since its home state of Massachusetts enacted healthcare reforms in 2006 will help it perform well as a Pioneer program.
Potential upsides include less “schizophrenic” payments structures.
“A lot of people exist in a mixed mode where the federal government was paying fee for service and they might have risk contracts on commercial side,” he says. “So by doing this we're less into this mixed mode and more into similar modes so the messaging with our providers, our communities and our patients is the same. It's a little less confusing.”
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House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) on Monday said the nation's doctors don't need more uncertainty, but that's just what physicians are getting from Congress.
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Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, had some harsh words this week for House Republicans, who have included cuts to a prevention fund he championed as a way to pay for an extension of current Medicare's physician reimbursement rates.
“They don't believe in prevention; they don't believe in public health; they believe just go ahead and get sick and then somehow magically somebody is going to take care of you,” he told reporters Tuesday when asked about the proposed cuts to the Prevention and Public Health Fund.
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Why? Why not?! That’s what hospital executives and workers should ask their board members if their facilities don’t have a “never events” policy in place to prevent medical errors.
Leah Binder, CEO of the Leapfrog Group, tasked attendees with that challenge during the patient safety organization’s annual meeting Tuesday at the Hyatt Regency in Crystal City, Va. This year, Leapfrog honored 65 hospitals with the organization’s “Top Hospital” designation. That award recognizes hospitals that deliver the highest quality care by preventing medical errors, reducing mortality for at-risk procedures and reducing hospital readmissions for patients.
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Now we have another reason to hail the chief: aside from holding the most powerful office in the land, he also lives beyond the average life expectancy of the average U.S. male.
We've all seen pictures of U.S. presidents at the beginning and end of the terms, noting how four years in office undoubtedly hastens their aging. So that's why the results of a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (registration required) (PDF) were surprising.
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