Editor's Note: This spotlight article was recently included in PwC's Q1 2015 US health services deals insights report.
These days it seems every health system is in the middle of a transformation — be it buying, selling or trying to integrate the assets it has amassed over time. Being in the business of transformation, this means we find ourselves invariably and repeatedly answering the question, "What are the big stumbling blocks to avoid?"
Without fail, our answer will include some
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Healthcare Policy Regulation & Reform | News, Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
Parity Not Apparent: There Is No Biopsy for Mental Illness
Getting legislation through Congress—often a monumental battle—is one thing. But implementing new laws may be a greater challenge simply because they require so much sustained energy and attention.
Take mental health parity laws, for example.
Congress passed the Mental Health Parity Act (MHPA) championed by Sens. Paul Wellstone (D-MN) and Pete Domenici (R-NM) in 1996. The law prohibits employee-sponsored group health plans from charging more in a year or over a lifetime for mental health
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The Death of Fee-for-Service in Healthcare
On April 16, 2015, President Obama signed into law H.R. 2, the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015(MACRA), effectively sentencing Fee-for-Service (FFS) to death. The best explanation for how FFS is destroying the nation comes from Charles Munger, vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and ad-hoc health luminary, who is equating what American doctors do, to raising rattlesnakes so they can collect the bounty for dead rattlers offered by the government in an effort to combat a
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4 Strategies to Building A Modern Healthcare Billing & Payment System
The U.S. healthcare industry’s billing and payment system is a horse-and-buggy in a world contemplating driverless cars. Consumers, shouldering higher costs, are frustrated by the system, which still largely relies on paper and telephone calls for billing and payment. The $2.9 trillion sector needs to transform the way it does business, creating a more transparent, seamless, convenient way to bill and collect money from its customers, according to “Money matters: Billing and payment for a New
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HHS Announces $101M in ACA Funding to 164 Community Health Centers
HHS Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell announced today approximately $101 million in Affordable Care Act funding to 164 new health center sites across 33 states and two U.S. Territories for the delivery of comprehensive primary health care services in communities that need them most. These new health centers are projected to increase access to health care services for nearly 650,000 patients.
Investment Details
This investment announced today will add to the more than 550 new health center sites
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12 Things You Need to Know About Value-Based Reimbursement
Public and private payers, including Medicare and some of the nation’s biggest health insurers, plan to hasten the migration of the healthcare reimbursement system from pay-for-volume to pay-for-value. The acceleration in the pace of change from fee for service to risk-based reimbursement is likely to reshape the healthcare business over the next three to five years.
While all healthcare stakeholders will be affected, the pioneers of this approach to healthcare financing will be large,
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HealthPrize, MeadWestvaco Partner to Increase Medication Adherence
HealthPrize Technologies, LLC and MeadWestvaco are collaborating to integrate their proven adherence solutions to provide an end-to-end program to pharmaceutical companies, pharmacy chains, and the patients they serve. As part of the partnership, MWV's calendared medication packaging will feature a link to HealthPrize's Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) medication adherence and patient engagement platform.
Not only will this linkage connect patients to HealthPrize's digital patient engagement
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11 Recent Trends on Advancing Patient Engagement Tools
Advancing patient engagement can improve patient health outcomes and lay a foundation for many care coordination efforts, including meaningful use, Patient-centered Medical Homes and Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). Today, eClinicalWorks has released recent survey findings examining public and physician attitudes towards advances in patient engagement tools.
The survey, commissioned by eClinicalWorks and conducted online by Harris Poll among over 2,000 U.S. adults, in March 2015 reveals
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Do All Physicians Oppose the Transition to ICD-10?
Editor's Note: The Coalition for ICD-10 is a broad-based healthcare industry advocacy group — hospitals, health plans, hospital and physician office coding experts, vendors, and the health information technology (HIT) community— united in support of the U.S. adoption of the ICD-10 coding standard.
According to French abstract artist Robert Delaunay, “Our understanding is correlative to our perception.” Many in the healthcare community may have the perception that all physicians oppose the
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PwC Report: 5 Key Trends Fueled by the Affordable Care Act
In its first five years, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has already left an indelible mark on the $2.9 trillion health sector. By energizing five fundamental shifts, the law has accelerated the rise of a New Health Economy predicated on value, according to a new report from PwC’s Health Research Institute (HRI), “Five Trends to Watch as the Affordable Care Act Turns Five.”
According to the PwC report, although much groundwork was laid in advance of the law’s enactment, health
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