August 10, 2012
news
According to a survey from the Adaptive Business Leaders (ABL) Organization, an executive networking group for healthcare leaders, execs in the industry are split on the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Of the 249 California-based senior healthcare executives surveyed, 38 percent responded that the ACA had already provided at least some opportunity for growth; while 45 percent had found it to be neutral, and 17 percent found it to be negative or disastrous.
July 24, 2012 Mark Hagland
article
The early morning hours (local time) of Thursday, June 28 reminded me once again of a few of the many reasons why I love being a journalist. On that morning, shortly after 10 a.m. Eastern time, the Supreme Court handed down its much-anticipated ruling in National Federation of Independent Business et al. v. Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, et al.—the ruling on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), President Barack Obama’s signature domestic legislation, and the focus of debate and the subject of several lawsuits that ultimately coalesced into National Federation.
July 20, 2012 Gabriel Perna
blog
There is a battle going on in the nation's capital over the highly controversial Affordable Care Act, and one of the casualties could be the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) if some congressmen in Washington D.C. get their way. Without getting into specific politics, any suggestion to get rid of AHRQ is in a word: crazy.
June 19, 2012 Mark Hagland
blog
In a conversation with senior clinical executives of Premier health alliance member organizations earlier this month, one thing was incontestably clear: the leaders of the truly pioneering patient care organizations nationwide simply aren’t waiting for Washington to tell them what to do to remake healthcare.
May 20, 2012
blog
I was trained to think of coding as a downstream process to care that is of little clinical significance. But, as I learned during the course of the week; I was dead wrong. Rather than simply polishing the chart, those downstream processes are intended to strengthen it. And, with the rapid evolution of MU and value care, the focus on clinical documentation integrity is moving upstream, directly to the provider.
I also found that getting the diagnosis correct, whether for coding, clinical care, quality improvement, or value-based payment is straight-forward but not at all simple.
May 8, 2012
news
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has announced the first winners of the Health Care Innovation awards, which was made possible by the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The 26 winners have projects nationwide that will aim save money, deliver high quality medical care and enhance the health care workforce, according to the ACA. The preliminary awardees announced today expect to reduce health spending by $254 million over the next three years.
April 30, 2012
news
Members of the Premier healthcare alliance recorded savings of more than $1.45 billion last year by collaborating to improve performance, integrating and comparing data, and using innovative purchasing practices, on top of an additional $2.75 billion in savings from lowering product pricing for hospitals. The total savings for Premier members was $4.2 billion, to which the for-profit collaborative of hospitals and non-acute care clinics, accounts to its various performance improvement strategies.
April 24, 2012 Mark Hagland
blog
When it comes to charges for common healthcare procedures, a new study from UCSF Medical School finds dramatic variations in hospital charges, even as the healthcare system begins to bend toward greater pricing and outcomes transparency.
March 19, 2012 Mark Hagland
article
The Premier health alliance's enterprise-wide chief medical officer, Dr. Richard Bankowitz, shares his thoughts on what's working in the remarkable QUEST initiative, and why what's being learned needs to be replicated health system-wide. Not surprisingly, data is at the center of the progress being logged in this program.
March 19, 2012 Mark Hagland
article
Clinician leaders at the Spectrum Health System, an eight-hospital, integrated regional health system based on Grand Rapids, Mich., have been succeeding in reducing avoidable hospital readmissions. In fact, the health system has successfully reduced readmissions for patients in their cardiac care unit in less than two years.
March 18, 2012 Mark Hagland
blog
The implications of a new study from the federal Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research (AHRQ) are many for the new healthcare. The key underlying question: is your organization moving towards the new accountability and transparency in healthcare? It's a subject we'll be talking about at our Executive Summit in May.
February 29, 2012 Mark Hagland
article
I’ve found it fascinating reading “Googled: The End of the World as We Know It,” a 2009 book by Ken Auletta, an author and journalist perhaps best-known for penning the “Annals of Communications” column for The New Yorker since 1992. What Auletta does so well in reporting on the rise of Google is to avoid the usual tack of simply telling a corporate narrative, and instead, not only tells truly interesting anecdotes and behind-the-scenes stories, but also supplies the intelligent questions and analysis that make the book a very worthwhile read. Most of all, he puts the story of Google’s development into a very understandable context, without the usual hype. Particularly illuminating is the first chapter, “Messing with the Magic"...
