Vitals Study Shows Consumers Using Cost Transparency Tools Select Clinical Laboratories with Low Test Prices

Researchers find shopping for medical laboratory tests increased by nearly 50%, and people are saving more than a million dollars annually by shopping for blood tests Each year, more consumers use online healthcare price-shopping tools to find hospitals, physicians, and clinical laboratories that have the lowest prices. And medical laboratory tests is among the top services on their lists! Researchers at Vitals of Lyndhurst, NJ, a company that publishes online physician ratings, analyzed how...

Clinical Laboratories and Pathology Groups May See Fewer Fee-For-Service Payments as More Hospitals and Health Systems Become Self-Insured

As national health insurers push more risk to hospital systems and medical groups, many hospital administrators become more interested in establishing their own health insurance companies New modes of provider reimbursement—such as bundled payments and budgeted payments—are motivating hospitals and health systems to reconsider their existing relationships with health insurers. Hospital administrators want to control the dollars they save by improving patient care, instead of allowing insurance...

Big Health Insurers Acquire Health IT Horsepower to Support Their Accountable Care Organizations

Actions by major insurers indicate that ACOs operated by hospitals will have competition Until recently, most media coverage about nascent accountable care organizations (ACOs) centered on the plans of major hospitals and health systems to organize ACOs within their communities. Now comes news that major health insurers are making sizeable investments as they prepare to launch their own ACOs. These developments could be auspicious for local clinical laboratories and anatomic pathology groups....

Statewide Medical Home Programs Launched in Rhode Island and North Dakota

Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) is the latest concept in managed care. Primary care physicians, relegated to gatekeeper status in the HMO model of the 1990s, are elevated to the status of healthcare guru, taking the role of coordinating care, counseling, and educating patients. Launching the first statewide Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH), programs are Rhode Island and North Dakota. The PCMH concept, which has been endorsed by the AMA, is a care delivery model that provides patients...

CMS Ready to Add Three More Items to “Never Events” No Pay Policy for Medical Errors

Hospitals, physicians, laboratories and others have until January 1, 2009, to provide comments on the proposal by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) on three National Coverage Determinations about preventable surgical errors, or “never events.” Dark Daily readers know that, beginning October 1, CMS stopped paying hospitals for care or services associated with a list of eight “never events.” Other insurers, including Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association,...
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