The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released data showing significant variation among U.S. hospitals in charges for the same services.

More than any other concept in health care, value has become a guiding principle for health care leaders and stakeholders as they wade into the era of health care reform. To assist health care financial leaders in their drive to value, the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) launched the HFMA Value Project, yielding a collection of case studies, presentations, and assorted educational resources that can be found on its website. HealthCXO spoke with HFMA’s Richard Gundling, VP, Financial Healthcare Practices, to identify the key financial issues facing hospitals and physician practices in 2013.

In 2009, the recession was in full swing, unemployment rates were high, and health care facilities were providing more than $39 billion a year in uncompensated care for the uninsured. Instead of riding out the recession with uncertainty and accruing more debt, Sharp HealthCare (San Diego, California) joined forces with the nonprofit Foundation for Health Coverage Education (FHCE) (San Mateo, California) to meet the problem head on. Sharp leveraged a Web-based eligibility software program and took on a strong patient advocacy role to provide uninsured patients with much-needed eligibility assistance.

Philadelphia insurer Independence Blue Cross (IBC), New York University (NYU) and NYU Langone Medical Center are jointly collaborating to develop machine-learning algorithms to identify undiagnosed diabetes and pre-diabetes in patients, according to NYU’s April 29 announcement.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will collaborate with Archimedes—a Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente innovation healthcare modeling and analytics company—to supply “unprecedented” access to synthetic CMS claims data, according to Archimedes' May 1 announcement.

The true cost of emergency department (ED) services may be as much as three times the amount of longstanding federal estimates.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT’s (ONC) has updated its open government product, Health IT Dashboard, with 100,000 new data points.

EMERYVILLE, Calif., April 30, 2013 -- MedeAnalytics, a leading provider of healthcare performance management solutions, announced today that Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont (BCBSVT) selected MedeAnalytics' Medical Management Analytics. BCBSVT's vision is to provide population health management--which includes an integrated approach to physical and mental health--as well as future episode-based contracting, also known as bundled payments.