The bill was crafted partly in response to rising complaints among seniors over aggressive marketing practices for Medicare Advantage plans. U.S. Sens. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., and Dr. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, have introduced the bipartisan Medicare & You Handbook Improvement Act, which is meant to ensure that when seniors assess their Medicare coverage options, they have the necessary […]
More than half of patients are concerned about the quality of care they’re receiving, according to the Software Advice survey. One of the firm’s analysts dives into the results. Telemedicine has, at long last, become very popular. But lingering concerns remain on its effectiveness for certain diagnoses and treatments. Software Advice’s 2022 State of Telemedicine […]
Implementing and pursuing innovation in digital health and healthcare IT should be a priority for all U.S. healthcare providers and payers — especially as the lessons and response to the Covid-19 pandemic become permanently part of our everyday lives. The outbreak of Covid-19 was a “black swan” event that dramatically accelerated the evolution and acceptance […]
For a modern medical practice, efficiency is everything. Labor costs continue to increase, putting a pinch on practices that are still recovering from pandemic shutdowns. An August 2022 snapshot of practices shows that, although physician productivity is increasing, expenses are growing faster than reimbursements. Every person in the practice must work at peak efficiency, from […]
To understand this dynamic, you need to know who the customer is. One of the key questions arising from looking at financial statements is this: how do we “get to the bottom line” in healthcare? In our society and culture, we have a fascination with the term “net income,” but it may have little meaning […]
As expected, the COVID-19 PHE (Public Health Emergency) was extended for the 11th time, on October 13th, 2022, another 90-days, which will extend many of the CARES Act 1135 Waivers through January 11th, 2023. This extension confuses many healthcare professionals because in a 60-Minutes news interview, President Joe Biden, stated, that the “pandemic is over.” […]
Omicron subvariants BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 — dubbed “escape variants” for their immune evasiveness — now account for 49.7 percent of U.S. COVID-19 cases, according to the CDC’s COVID-19 data tracker weekly review published Nov. 18. Ten findings: Variants Based on projections for the week ending Nov. 19, the CDC estimates that BQ.1 accounts for 25.5 […]
Digital technologies are transforming healthcare by reducing human errors, facilitating the coordination of care, and improving efficiencies within medical practices. Healthcare IT enables providers to more easily manage the practice, big or small, so they can focus on serving their patients. Because of the sensitive personal and health information stored and transmitted via digital health […]
Some commercial health insurers are using policies that can delay patient care and create burden for providers, causing relationships with hospitals to worsen, according to a survey by AHA. The association fielded responses from more than 200 hospitals in 2019 and from 772 hospitals between December 2021 and February 2022, creating data that both predates […]