Financial Systems

When The New York Times runs an article on page 1 of its Sunday Business section, people notice. And that goes double when the headline on the article reads, "How to Charge $546 for Six Liters of Saltwater." The bottom line? The push for transparency will only intensify in the new healthcare.

Strong relationships with physicians, particularly those that are long standing, are likely to increase patients' openness to talk about health care costs when decisions are being made about their treatment options, according to a study from the National Institutes of Health. Rushed visits with insufficient time to talk about important issues can undermine efforts to bring sensitive topics like costs into the doctor-patient relationship and can be counter-productive. The work appears online in the Journal of General Medicine.

A new report released by the Department of Health and Human Services finds premiums in the Health Insurance Marketplace will be nearly 20 percent lower in 2014 than previously expected.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan's patient-centered medical home program, the largest PCMH program in the U.S., saved an estimated $155 million from July 2008 to July 2011 based on calculations made from a recent analysis published in Health Services Research Journal.

Staffing and scheduling responsibilities for nurse managers present tough day-to-day challenges that involve matching often unpredictable patient demand to the nurse resources needed to care for those patients. One health system has been able to save millions of dollars and improve care by using labor management software.