The U.S. Senate yesterday, by a 78-19 vote, passed the $10 billion Temporary Extension Act of 2010, which includes a provision that delays a 21.2 percent Medicare payment reduction to physicians until the end of March. The House of Representatives passed the legislation last week.
The Senate Finance Committee voted today in favor of its version of proposed healthcare reform legislation in a 14-9 vote, including the approval of Olympia Snowe, R.-Me.
President Barack Obama Sunday released plans to cut in half the prescription drug expenses of Medicare Part D beneficiaries who have reached the coverage gap (doughnut hole) in their prescription benefit. Simultaneously, pharmaceutical companies have agreed to foot the bill for $80 billion in Medicare drugs over the next decade for this population.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., introduced legislation to establish a private, nonprofit corporation that will research and compare clinical outcomes of alternative therapies and health strategies.
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, led by Chairman Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., introduced legislation this week advocating for more government involvement in healthcare coverage. The bill is certain to launch a drawn-out debate over the current delivery direction of healthcare in the United States when it is introduced on the Senate floor in July.
Healthcare reform cannot survive on expanding coverage alone; it requires promoting best practices to fix what is broken, wrote President Barack Obama in a letter sent June 2 to Sens. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and Max Baucus, D-Mont.,--the two key stakeholders who have been at odds over the payor component of the administration's healthcare reform plan.
Thursday, May 07 2009
GE today launched a new healthcare business strategy, healthymagination, dedicating $6 billion to preventive care and consumer-driven initiatives. The new strategy was announced in a live webcast, hosted by Jeff Immelt, chairman and CEO of GE.
An average of 14,000 Americans lose health coverage each day, healthcare insurance premiums grow more than three times faster than wages and physician reimbursement has declined by more than 20 percent in the past eight years. Couple these sad statistics with a demographic shift that will see an ever increasing number of U.S. citizens eligible for, and needing services from, Medicare and it becomes clear that present healthcare delivery policies are quickly becoming fiscally unsustainable.
In the first of three roundtables on healthcare delivery system reform held by the Senate Finance Committee, participants this week discussed increasing primary care physician payments by reducing payments to imaging services providers.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has released a report approximating the costs of the current updated economic stimulus package currently being debated in the Senate, as well as estimating its assistance to the U.S. healthcare system.
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The use of health IT to reduce rehospitalizations will be welcome but also disruptive, said Stephen Jencks, an independent consultant in healthcare safety during a Feb. 24 webinar on the potential use of health IT to mitigate rehospitalizations, sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
During the Health IT Standards Committee meeting on Feb. 24 in Washington, D.C., the Clinical Operations Workgroup sought to gather comments on proposed recommendations on implementation specifications for content exchange, vocabulary and code set standards for the Interim Final Rule of meaningful use.
The state of Maine currently has the largest operating statewide exchange in the country in relation to population. Although Devore Culver, Executive Director of Maine’s HealthInfoNet, expects that distinction to change in the months ahead, the state’s HIE is entering the final months of its demonstration phase, and is slated to move in to its full statewide implementation in the second half of 2010. Culver, who is former CIO of Eastern Maine Health Care, recently spoke with CMIO about the progress HealthInfoNet has made.
In 2006, the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), a branch of the FDA, began examining the number of medical device reports they received. Over the past two years, the number of submitted reports has increased, sparking a demand for the CDRH to make a move to electronic reporting.
A new hospital breaking ground usually isn’t breaking news. But the vision of patient care at one new facility, tentatively named Palomar Medical Center West (PMC West), is currently illegal under California state law.
