Category: ACO

Healthcare is in the middle of a sea of change when it comes to the revenue cycle. As the industry moves from fee-for-service to population-based management and billing – as evidenced by the rise of accountable care organizations (ACOs) and bundled payments – physicians are now under even more pressure. By Anthony F. Oliva, DO,…

With the news hitting in late July that nine Pioneer accountable care organizations (ACOs) will drop out of the Pioneer program, healthcare experts have been struggling to draw conclusions about what this really means for the future of accountable care. Is it still a realistic outcome? Michael Nugent, managing director of the healthcare practice at…

One-third of US workers now have high-deductible health plans, and those numbers are expected to grow in 2014 as implementation of the Affordable Care Act continues. There is concern that high-deductible health plans might cause enrollees of low socioeconomic status to forgo emergency care as a result of burdensome out-of-pocket costs. …read more Source: Research…

When it comes to keeping patients happy, EMRs matter, a new study suggests. More patients are logging on to access their own records – and they tend to like it, according to data from research firms Aeffect and 88 Brand Partners. About 24 percent of patients have used EMRs for tasks such as checking test…

Today, AARP announced new resources available to all Americans looking for facts about the Affordable Care Act including a new online tool called Health Law Answers. …read more Source: New online health law tool now available to all Americans

On Monday, the HIT Council met to review progress on health information exchange in Massachusetts. Here’s the presentation we used. You’ll see that we’ve sent 1,349,083 transactions through the MassHIway. Increasingly we’re seeing subnetworks – aggregations of clinicians in regions of the state – joining the MassHIway to send transactions to other subnetworks. We’ve heard…

As a health delivery organization that is rapidly expanding its accountable care business, Franciscan Alliance Inc. is in need of forward-looking data analytics tools. But instead of a traditional arrangement with a software vendor, it has decided to work with the Indiana Health Information Exchange (IHIE), which is working on a suite of analytics tools…

ImaCor Inc., the developer of the world’s only hemodynamic transesophageal echocardiography technology, announced that multiple recent studies have shown that hTEE significantly changes patient management in critical care. …read more Source: Studies show that hTEE technology changes patient management in critical care

The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) has granted $3 million to six health center networks to improve the quality of care through implementation and adoption of health information technology. The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) has granted $3 million to six health center networks to improve the quality of care through implementation and…

News outlets covered Friday’s vote in the House of Representatives to keep the IRS from enforcing parts of the Affordable Care Act and today’s weekly GOP address by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. …read more Source: Republicans' Obamacare twofer: 40th repeal-type vote, Sen. Collins blasts employer provision