Oct. 21-26: HCAHPS Changes Coming in Opioid Bill
Oct. 18—Major legislation, which could be signed into law next week, aims to address the opioid crisis and includes changes to Medicare’s hospital patient survey.
Ask the Experts: Reagent Agreements
How do you record reagent agreements for which the vendor locks in the price on various reagents if the hospital commits to a minimum purchase quantity each year?
Comprehensive Compliance-Focused Processes for Physician Arrangements
Karin Chernoff Kaplan reviews the basics—and the importance—of establishing consistent processes for setting up and managing physician compensation agreements and thresholds that avoid regulatory problems.
Operationalizing Predictive Analytics to Guide Healthcare Business Decisions
Providers and health plans are turning to predictive analytics as a tool for identifying actionable insights that can be used to control costs and improve outcomes.
Systemness as a Lever for Greater Health System Resilience
Systemness, or operating in a way that enables the system to create more value than the sum of its parts, enhances an organization’s business resilience. The most important manifestations of systemness are patient access and provider network management.
Confronting the Physician Shortage Head-On: A Health Plan Takes Action
John Baackes, CEO of L.A. Care Health Plan, describes a long-term initiative to ensure a strong physician pipeline is available to serve the healthcare safety net in the market.
The Internet of Things Presents Security Concerns
The sheer number of networked healthcare devices means larger cybersecurity attacks are easier to execute. For healthcare providers, these breaches are not only disruptive, embarrassing, and expensive, but they can lead to serious medical complications for patients.
Calculating KPIs for Value-Based Payment Models
If hospitals and health systems know the patients for whom they’re at risk and the benchmarks against which they are held accountable, they can lower costs and improve outcomes for an entire population—not just a single patient.
Challenges and Opportunities Seen in Social Determinants
Oct. 10—Providers and insurers are seeing a range of obstacles and new opportunities in efforts to better address the most powerful factors affecting patient health.
Transitioning to a New Medicare Benchmarking Paradigm
As commercial health plans adopt a case-rate approach to payment based on Medicare’s MS-DRGs, modifications are needed to account for how health plans’ populations differ from the Medicare population.