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.

When President Obama signed PPACA into law three years ago, 2014 was a country mile down the road. Just months from now, open enrollment for plans participating in the health exchanges will begin, and the expansion of coverage is nigh—though questions persist. Will a potential 30 million new health care customers result in lower or higher premiums? Can providers achieve the efficiencies necessary to operate on reduced reimbursements—and hit quality benchmarks? Will the uninsured participate in anywhere near the numbers expected?

A one year extension of Meaningful Use Stage 2 would maximize its potential for success, the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) declared to senators in a May 6 letter.

When used correctly, EHRs produce more accurate documentation leading to more complete coding, and ultimately, more accurate reimbursement claims, according to Sue Bowman, senior director of coding policy and compliance of the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA).

This week’s developments include a proposed rule updating the inpatient prospective payment system, the first meeting of a federal patient safety group and a new effort to prevent the switch to ICD-10.

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.

PORTLAND, Ore., May 1, 2013 -- Health care reform has resulted in some of the largest scale changes to the way health care is delivered and funded since the 1960s, providing unprecedented access, coverage and protections for American consumers. To help people better understand the variety of choices before them, Regence has launched a new website that is designed to help consumers and businesses navigate the new health care landscape.