After a decade or so of collecting information from hospitals on the quality of their care, the Medicare program announced that it will finally start using what the data actually reveals about a hospital's performance to set the level of payments it receives. Read more »
As the health care law's expanded coverage of the uninsured brings 16 million more Americans into Medicaid by 2014, the challenge will be to find enough primary care physicians willing and able to treat those patients. Read more »
Federal initiatives to push hospitals to report on the quality of their care—and penalize those who don't measure up—are only useful if the metrics are fair and scientifically sound, evaluate issues vital to patient safety, and consider the differences between patients, a hospital trade representative said at an Alliance for Health Reform briefing. Read more »
The American Medical Association (AMA) is proposing a complete overhaul of the formula used to determine reimbursements to physicians who see Medicare patients, responding to what observers say is a serious bipartisan effort to deal with the persistent problem. Read more »
In a coup for the fledgling office at heart of the Obama administration's efforts to find ways to streamline health care and control spending growth, Nancy Nielsen, a physician and past president of the American Medical Association (AMA), has signed on as a senior adviser to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. Read more »
The Department of Health and Human Services is expecting a barrage of comments after its recent announcement that it wants public input into the essential benefits that insurance plans in the new exchange markets will have to cover in 2014. Read more »