March 3, 2012 Mark Hagland
article
What happens when strategy, collaboration, and necessity all meet? Sometimes, one gets noteworthy innovation, along with unusual, yet very workable, organizational structures. That’s certainly what’s happened in south central New Jersey, where an initial collaboration of private-practice physicians has led to both a physician organization with a highly entrepreneurial culture, and a successful spinoff IT and administrative services organization.
February 28, 2012 Mark Hagland
article
As physician organizations move forward to implement and optimize revenue cycle management (RCM) programs, they are doing so in an environment of increasingly challenging reimbursement and growing stresses on their doctors.
February 6, 2012 By David Raths
blog
In January, Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson filed a lawsuit against consulting firm Accretive Health Inc., which last summer lost an unencrypted laptop that contained medical data on 23,500 Minnesotans. The state wants Accretive to disclose to Minnesota patients the data that it has about them, where and how such data is stored, including but not limited to whether it has been sent overseas, and how such data is utilized.
November 8, 2011 Gabriel Perna
article
Healthcare IT is quickly becoming the most significant economic investment for patient-care healthcare organizations according to a recent survey from the Charlotte, N.C.-based Premier healthcare alliance. In a survey of 743 healthcare providers, approximately 40 percent of the respondents said they expect their largest capital investment over the next 12 months to be in HIT and telecommunications.
August 13, 2011 Mark Hagland
article
While total cost of care (TCOC) contracts share some of the characteristics of accountable care organizations (ACOs) as envisioned in the federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently released preliminary rule on ACOS in its Medicare Shared Savings Program, there are also important differences.
July 21, 2011 John DeGaspari
blog
At a time when hospitals are being pressured to do more with less, St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital, an 864-bed teaching hospital in Houston, is taking steps to improve its operational efficiency, which it expects will allow it to realize significant cost savings, better manage the length of patient stay and improve patient satisfaction.
June 24, 2011 Mark Hagland
article
With their far smaller organizational size and generally smaller and more overburdened business and IT staffs, medical groups are often behind hospitals when it comes to applying the most advanced revenue cycle management (RCM) strategies to their financial situations. But at WellSpan Medical Group, the 480-provider multispecialty group affiliated with the two-hospital, York, Pa.-based WellSpan Health system, executives realized years ago that the potential return on investment in RCM solutions was very worthwhile.
April 22, 2011 John Degaspari
article
Having a good understanding of the billing process, whether through internal workflow audits or employing a software solution to make sure a hospital is being reimbursed for every service it provides, is crucial to maximizing revenue streams.
April 7, 2011 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
article
With the announcement of the proposed rule on accountable care organization (ACO) development that was published by the Department of Health and Human Services on March 31, the Falls Church, Va.-based CSC released a report describing six success factors and HIT solutions ACO organizations need to considering when achieving operational goals. The report, entitled “Health Information Requirements for Accountable Care,” recognizes that ACOs will evolve along different paths, some from integrated delivery networks (IDNs), some from independent physician associations (IPAs), or some from multi-stakeholder health information exchanges (HIEs), but all ACOs will require similar HIT underpinnings.
March 31, 2011 John DeGaspari
blog
How important is having a good understanding of your billing process to controlling your revenue stream? Very, according to Dan Klaber, director of central business operations for the 450-member University Physicians Healthcare (UPH) physician group, part of the University of Arizona Health Network, a two-hospital academic system and health plan in Tucson.
February 22, 2011 Charlene Marietti
article
As changes to the payment model continue to evolve, John Glaser, CEO of Siemens Health Services (Malvern, Penn.) foresees a challenging decade for healthcare providers. As receivables decline, they will not only be forced to do more with less, they must prove quality to get reimbursements. And to meet bundled payment mandates, they will need data—lots of data. "Anxiety about cost has become alarm about cost," he adds.
