Economics

This channel highlights factors that impact hospital and healthcare economics and revenue. This includes news on healthcare policies, reimbursement, marketing, business plans, mergers and acquisitions, supply chain, salaries, staffing, and the implementation of a cost-effective environment for patients and providers.

IMS acquires Med-Vantage

Analytical services provider IMS Health has acquired Med-Vantage, a San Francisco-based software technology company, expanding IMS capabilities in the payor marketplace. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Health Affairs: Raising quality cuts costs

Driven by robust clinical information systems, rigorous performance measurement has led Intermountain Healthcare in Utah to achieve healthcare's holy grail: vastly improved patient outcomes at substantially lower costs.

JACR: Lean could help radiology cut waste

Applying the Toyota business concept of Lean Manufacturing--a quality improvement (QI) method aimed at reducing waste--to radiology can spur optimized value and enhanced QI, according to an article published in the June issue of the Journal of American College of Radiology.

Webinar: Theres more than one road to ACO shared savings

Accountable care organizations (ACOs) offer an opportunity for providers to participate in Medicare in a new wayrewarding better care for patients, said John Pilotte, director of performance-based payment policy staff at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), who made his comments during a June 2 webinar. 

Health Affairs: Mass. P4P plan hasn't uncovered disparities

Massachusetts' innovative use of pay-for-performance bonuses to attempt to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in the case of Medicaid patients has turned up no evidence of the problem at any of the state's 66 acute-care hospitals, according to a study published in the June edition of Health Affairs.

Medicaid to stop paying for 'never' events in July

Medicaid will stop reimbursing states for any amounts expended for providing medical assistance for provider-preventable events, including healthcare-acquired conditions, effective July 1.

HHS releases $40M for chronic disease prevention

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has made available approximately $40 million to strengthen and better coordinate activities within state and territorial health departments aimed at preventing chronic diseases and promoting health.

Radiology: Peer review fundamentally flawed

Like much of medicine, radiology suffers from a backward perspective on performance improvement. Most industries have moved beyond punitive programs like peer review to predict and prevent errors at the system level, rather than report them at the individual one, explained the authors of a June perspectives article in Radiology.

Around the web

The American College of Cardiology has shared its perspective on new CMS payment policies, highlighting revenue concerns while providing key details for cardiologists and other cardiology professionals. 

As debate simmers over how best to regulate AI, experts continue to offer guidance on where to start, how to proceed and what to emphasize. A new resource models its recommendations on what its authors call the “SETO Loop.”

FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, MD, said the clinical community needs to combat health misinformation at a grassroots level. He warned that patients are immersed in a "sea of misinformation without a compass."

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