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How Five Leading Safety-Net Hospitals Are Preparing For The Challenges and Opportunities of Health Care Reform – Kaiser Family Foundation
This study, published in the journal Health Affairs, examines how five leading safety-net hospitals are preparing for major changes expected to result from the Affordable Care Act (ACA), including less government support for uncompensated care and the need to compete for newly insured people. The hospitals studied are Bellevue Hospital Center in New York City; Denver Health Medical Center in Colorado; Parkland Health and Hospital System in Dallas; San Francisco General Hospital in California; and Virginia Commonwealth University Health System in Richmond, Va. Their preparations include improving the efficiency and quality of care delivery, investing in the physical and staffing infrastructure needed to retain patients and attract newly insured ones, and laying the groundwork for accountable care organizations and new payment systems. Authors include Jennifer Tolbert of the Kaiser Family Foundation, Terri Coughlin and Sharon Long of the Urban Institute, and Edward Sheen, a resident physician who was on research fellowship with the Foundation at the time of the study.
See on www.kff.org
For an aggregation of other articles on Hot Topics in Healthcare Law, go to my magazine on Scoop.it – Hot Topics in Healthcare Law and Regulation and my newspaper on Paper.li – Hot Topics in Healthcare Law.
For an aggregation of other articles on improving healthcare, go to my internet magazine Scoop.it! Changing Health for the Better.
In quality push, hospitals face Medicare penalty over readmissions – Tampa Bay Times
RAISING THE STAKES: Nearly 2 million Medicare beneficiaries are readmitted within 30 days of release each year. The cost to Medicare? $17.5 billion in additional hospital bills.
See on www.tampabay.com
For an aggregation of other articles on Hot Topics in Healthcare Law, go to my magazine on Scoop.it – Hot Topics in Healthcare Law and Regulation and my newspaper on Paper.li – Hot Topics in Healthcare Law.
For an aggregation of other articles on improving healthcare, go to my internet magazine Scoop.it! Changing Health for the Better.
CMS Launches Electronic Quality Reporting Pilot For Hospitals – InformationWeek
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has inaugurated an electronic quality reporting pilot for hospitals participating in its Medicare electronic health record (EHR) incentive program.
According to an announcement on CMS’s QualityNet site, hospitals and critical access hospitals registered for the Medicare incentive program can begin testing their ability to send quality data directly from their EHRs to CMS. From Oct. 1 to Nov. 30, the last two months in which hospitals can attest to Meaningful Use and receive 2012 payments under the Medicare program, they can transmit this data to CMS on a “production basis” to meet the quality reporting criteria.
See on www.informationweek.com
For an aggregation of other articles on Hot Topics in Healthcare Law, go to my magazine on Scoop.it – Hot Topics in Healthcare Law and Regulation and my newspaper on Paper.li – Hot Topics in Healthcare Law.
For an aggregation of other articles on improving healthcare, go to my internet magazine Scoop.it! Changing Health for the Better.
Researchers Find EHR Training in Medical Schools To Be Lacking
Researchers Find EHR Training in Medical Schools To Be Lacking. Medical schools are not providing students with sufficient training on the use of electronic health record systems, according to a study published recently in the journal Teaching and Learning in Medicine, Modern Physician reports.
See on www.aspireemr.com
For an aggregation of other articles on Hot Topics in Healthcare Law, go to my magazine on Scoop.it – Hot Topics in Healthcare Law and Regulation and my newspaper on Paper.li – Hot Topics in Healthcare Law.
For an aggregation of other articles on improving healthcare, go to my internet magazine Scoop.it! Changing Health for the Better.
HEALTH AFFAIRS: In 2011 Nearly One-Third Of Physicians Said They Would Not Accept New Medicaid Patients, But Rising Fees May Help
HEALTH AFFAIRS: When fully implemented, the Affordable Care Act will expand the number of people with health insurance. This raises questions about the capacity of the health care workforce to meet increased demand. I used data on office-based physicians from the 2011 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey Electronic Medical Records Supplement to summarize the percentage of physicians currently accepting any new patients. Although 96 percent of physicians accepted new patients in 2011, rates varied by payment source: 31 percent of physicians were unwilling to accept any new Medicaid patients; 17 percent would not accept new Medicare patients; and 18 percent of physicians would not accept new privately insured patients. Physicians in smaller practices and those in metropolitan areas were less likely than others to accept new Medicaid patients. Higher state Medicaid-to-Medicare fee ratios were correlated with greater acceptance of new Medicaid patients. The findings serve as a useful baseline from which to measure the anticipated impact of Affordable Care Act provisions that could boost Medicaid payment rates to primary care physicians in some states while increasing the number of people with health care coverage.
See on content.healthaffairs.org
For an aggregation of other articles on Hot Topics in Healthcare Law, go to my magazine on Scoop.it – Hot Topics in Healthcare Law and Regulation and my newspaper on Paper.li – Hot Topics in Healthcare Law.
For an aggregation of other articles on improving healthcare, go to my internet magazine Scoop.it! Changing Health for the Better.
The Promise And Peril Of Accountable Care For Vulnerable Populations: A Framework For Overcoming Obstacles
Accountable care organizations (ACOs) are a promising payment model aimed at reducing costs while also improving the quality of care. However, there is a risk that vulnerable populations may not be fully incorporated into this new model. The authors define two distinct vulnerable populations, clinically at-risk and socially disadvantaged and discuss how ACOs may benefit each group. The authors provide a framework to use in considering challenges for both vulnerable patients and health systems on the path to accountable care. The authors identify policies that can help overcome these obstacles: strategies that support ACO formation in diverse settings and that monitor, measure, and reward the performance of providers that reach all patients, including vulnerable populations.
See on content.healthaffairs.org
For an aggregation of other articles on Hot Topics in Healthcare Law, go to my magazine on Scoop.it – Hot Topics in Healthcare Law and Regulation and my newspaper on Paper.li – Hot Topics in Healthcare Law.
For an aggregation of other articles on improving healthcare, go to my internet magazine Scoop.it! Changing Health for the Better.
New Yorker — Atul Gawande: Can Hospital Chains Improve the Medical Industry?
Restaurant chains have managed to combine quality control, cost control, and innovation. Can health care?
Big chains thrive because they provide goods and services of greater variety, better quality, and lower cost than would otherwise be available.
Medicine, though, had held out against the trend. Physicians were always predominantly self-employed, working alone or in small private-practice groups. American hospitals tended to be community-based. But that’s changing. Hospitals and clinics have been forming into large conglomerates. And physicians—facing escalating demands to lower costs, adopt expensive information technology, and account for performance—have been flocking to join them. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only a quarter of doctors are self-employed—an extraordinary turnabout from a decade ago, when a majority were independent. They’ve decided to become employees, and health systems have become chains.
See on www.newyorker.com
For an aggregation of other articles on Hot Topics in Healthcare Law, go to my magazine on Scoop.it – Hot Topics in Healthcare Law and Regulation and my newspaper on Paper.li – Hot Topics in Healthcare Law.
For an aggregation of other articles on improving healthcare, go to my internet magazine Scoop.it! Changing Health for the Better.
WNYC News – Metro Area Hospital To Be Hit with Federal Fines for ‘Frequent-Flyer’ Patients
Several New York-area hospitals will lose millions of dollars in federal Medicare payments, because too many of their patients keep coming back — and the government’s tired of paying for it.
The list of penalized hospitals includes some of the region’s biggest players: city hospitals, like Bellevue, Jacobi, Coney Island and Elmhurst; academic medical centers such as Beth Israel, St. Luke’s-Roosevelt and Mt. Sinai; and suburban ones like North Shore and Hackensack medical centers.
The federal government says if hospitals took better care of patients — especially ones with high needs — they wouldn’t be “frequent flyers,” constantly being readmitted and costing taxpayers billions of dollars.
Starting in October, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will start withholding up to 1 percent of Medicare payments from hospitals with too many “frequent flyer” patients. The maximum penalty will climb to 3 percent by October 2014.
Medicare came up with its list of “frequent flier” hospitals by looking at the 30-day readmission rate for patients with heart failure, heart attack and pneumonia.
See on www.wnyc.org
For an aggregation of other articles on Hot Topics in Healthcare Law, go to my magazine on Scoop.it – Hot Topics in Healthcare Law and Regulation and my newspaper on Paper.li – Hot Topics in Healthcare Law.
For an aggregation of other articles on improving healthcare, go to my internet magazine Scoop.it! Changing Health for the Better.
Congressional Budget Expert Says Preventive Care Will Raise — Not Cut — Costs
In yet more disappointing news for Democrats pushing for health care reform, Douglas W. Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, offered a skeptical view Friday of the cost savings that could result from preventive care — an area that President Obama and congressional Democrats repeatedly had emphasized as a way health care reform would be less expensive in the long term.
Obviously successful preventive care can make Americans healthier and save lives. But, Elmendorf wrote, it may not save money as Democrats had been arguing.
In their continuing struggles with CBO, Democrats from President Obama on down have expressed frustration that Elmendorf doesn’t give Democrats’ health care reform proposals sufficient credit for cost cutting through preventive care.
See on abcnews.go.com
For an aggregation of other articles on Hot Topics in Healthcare Law, go to my magazine on Scoop.it – Hot Topics in Healthcare Law and Regulation and my newspaper on Paper.li – Hot Topics in Healthcare Law.
For an aggregation of other articles on improving healthcare, go to my internet magazine Scoop.it! Changing Health for the Better.
Better medicine, brought to you by big data
Slowly but surely, health care is becoming a killer app for big data. Whether it’s Hadoop, machine learning, natural-language processing or some other technique, folks in the worlds of medicine and hospital administration understand that new types of data analysis are the key to helping them take their fields to the next level.
See on wesgbrooks.visibli.com
For an aggregation of other articles on Hot Topics in Healthcare Law, go to my magazine on Scoop.it – Hot Topics in Healthcare Law and Regulation and my newspaper on Paper.li – Hot Topics in Healthcare Law.
For an aggregation of other articles on improving healthcare, go to my internet magazine Scoop.it! Changing Health for the Better.
Joseph Rugg's Health Law Blog 