Attention Pathologists! MD Anderson and UnitedHealthcare Ink Bundled Payment Agreement for Cancer Care

If bundled payment becomes more common in treatment of cancer, then anatomic pathologists need a strategy to demonstrate their clinical value to physicians and payers MD Anderson Cancer Center and UnitedHealthcare (NYSE: UNH) announced a bundled payment agreement for the treatment of certain types of cancer. This development has implications for anatomic pathologist who provide cancer testing services to hospitals throughout the United States. The new three-year pilot at MD Anderson’s Head and...

2014’s Healthcare Price Transparency Report Card Reveals Few States Are Making It Easy and Fast for Consumers to See the Prices Charged by Hospitals, Physicians, and Medical Laboratories

One reason is that the healthcare price websites operated by most states are inadequate, ‘poorly designed or poorly functioning’ Efforts to encourage price transparency at hospitals and other providers are making little progress. That’s one conclusion to be made from the second annual Report Card on State Price Transparency Laws, that gave a failing grade to 45 states. This information is relevant because more consumers are now enrolled in high-deductible health plans. As a consequence,...

Public Hospital in Phoenix Slashes Patient Self-Pay Prices by 50% to Increase Hospital Price Transparency

Maricopa Integrated Health System reports that price transparency pays off by reducing uncompensated care and increasing business Arizona has a new law that requires hospitals, medical laboratories, diagnostic imaging facilities, ambulatory surgery centers, and urgent-care centers to publish the prices they charge self-pay and uninsured patients for the 50 most common inpatient and outpatient services. The law took effect on January 1, 2014. News accounts report that just one hospital took...

Castlight Health Offers Employers a Cloud-based Price Transparency Tool to Help Employees Shop for Low-Cost, High Quality Health Services

Similar to Oscar Healthcare in New York, this California-based enterprise technology company offers services to make it easy for individuals to see providers’ prices, including medical laboratory test prices Another company has entered the marketplace with their unorthodox business model to support health insurance programs. One cornerstone feature is a tool that enables both employers and beneficiaries to see the prices of different providers. This young player in the health benefits...
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