Financial/Revenue Cycle Management
The Obama Administration is budgeting $215 million for what's being called the Precision Medicine Initiative -- a project White House officials say will "pioneer a new model of patient-powered research."
Revenue cycle upgrades at U.S. hospitals have been pushed aside, in favor of preparation for the October 2015 ICD-10 transition and the chase for incentives tied to electronic health records, according to a Black Book survey of chief financial officers.
Health information exchanges most likely curb emergency room usage and costs, in some cases. But there's been a lot of talk lately about whether they are financially sustainable. A new systematic review suggests that, for the most part, they're not.
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center will pay $100,000 to the state of Massachusetts after one of its physicians failed to follow the hospital's laptop encryption policy and an unencrypted laptop was stolen.
The collections process is ripe for innovation, on both the payer and provider side. Increasingly, savvy providers are using health IT to broaden their access to and knowledge about their patient populations, with an eye toward greater success with bill collection.
Persistent regulatory and reimbursement roadblocks notwithstanding, nine out of 10 providers are moving forward with telemedicine projects, according to a new survey.
Meridian Health and Hackensack University Health Network announced merger plans on Oct. 16; if the deal clears regulatory hurdles it would result in New Jersey's largest hospital network. In the meantime, it's offering the chief information officers of each organization plenty to think about.
Here are some quotes from anonymous hospital CIOs that may sound familiar: "Morale is really bad; folks are burned out." "ICD-10 will never happen, we'll just keep spending money on it." "Doing more with less can only go so far." But there are reasons for optimism these days that shouldn't be forgotten.
What propels a group practice to fifteen-fold growth? At Westmed Medical Group, in New York's Westchester County, the surge can be attributed largely to care transformation driven by analytics.
In a bid to drive better quality, wider access and improved care coordination through health information technology, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has launched a new investment initiative for accountable care organizations taking part in the Medicare Shared Savings Program.