The Supreme Court’s decision to let states opt out of the health overhaul’s Medicaid expansion without losing current funding for the program lifts a budget mandate from states but could mean fewer Americans gain insurance coverage under the law.
Hospitals Surge, Insurers Slide on Ruling
High Court’s Health-Law Ruling a Boon for Pharmacies, Benefit Managers
Wealthy investors, health insurance companies and medical device makers will face hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes stemming from the health-care law that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld today.
U.S. spending on genetic tests will balloon fivefold to as much as $25 billion in the next decade, from $5 billion in 2010
The Supreme Court has given states a way out of expanding their Medicaid programs under the health law, and top Republican officials in several states were quick to say they want to take that step.
Health care ruling: Individual Mandate upheld by Supreme Court
Neither the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) nor California’s Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (CMIA) do enough to address the privacy and security of patients’ health information.
Advocates for rural healthcare providers are objecting to a Medicare Payment Advisory Commission report this month that says that access to rural healthcare services is “similar” to access in urban areas and that reimbursement for that care is “adequate.”
A part of the growing reach by UPS—along with rivals FedEx Corp.and DHL—is the business of running supply chains for pharmaceutical and medical-device companies.
A look at the federal health care overhaul in all 50 states
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is at it again. This time, the government-appointed panel is on fat patrol. Its review of the medical literature found that diet and exercise combined with group counseling beat popping a pill when it comes to controlling weight.
Wal-Mart, which hosts 149 U.S. health-care clinics that offer simple services, such as vaccinations and testing for strep throat, has closed 33 clinics this year and is becoming more selective about the doctors and hospital chains it allows to set up shop on its premises
FDA Seeks To Tame Exploding Medical App Market
A top Senate Democrat says his party has been doing some contingency planning in case the Supreme Court spikes some or all of the health reform law on Thursday — even though they’ve insisted that the law will be upheld.
Crowdfunding—the new, hip way to raise money for early-stage technologies and interesting projects—has found a happy home in the world of high-tech. But can the same model work for the much stodgier health-care industry?
US regulators approve first new prescription weight-loss drug in more than a decade
The Senate voted 92-4 to pass a compromise bill to reauthorize FDA user-fee programs
New Rules Will Ban ER Debt Collections At Charitable Hospitals
Happtique, a mobile health application store aimed primarily at healthcare providers, plans to launch an mRx program that will give hospitals and physicians a mechanism for prescribing mHealth apps to patients.
With primary-care doctors in short supply and often too busy to review medications, pharmacists are taking a more active role on the health-care team, going further than merely dispensing pills and sending out automated refill reminders
Taking prescription painkillers without a medical need increased 75 percent from 2002 to 2010, and most users were men, according to the first study to look at who is likely to abuse the drugs and how often it occurs.
E-Records Linked to Fewer Malpractice Claims – Harvard study shows dramatic dip after paper files are replaced, but exact connection isn’t clear
If you thought Monday’s immigration decision was confusing, wait until the Supreme Court weighs in on health care Thursday. Court-watchers expect a flurry of opinions, dissents and concurring judgments — a confusing outcome for a complex law.
Healthcare Shows High Job Growth, Low Productivity
Doctors should check weight and height for all patients to determine if they’re obese and refer them to intensive diet and exercise programs if necessary, according to new guidelines from a U.S. government-backed panel.
Retail Health Clinics Expanding
Starting next week, any health insurer licensed in Georgia can sell policies it offers in other states to Georgians. That includes policies that don’t meet minimum standards for coverage in Georgia.
The federal Health Data Initiative seeks to provide Health and Human Services (HHS) data to the public, free and with no strings attached, in effort to trigger the creation of health-related applications.
Some companies are adding drug dispensaries to their on-site health clinics. Others offer concierge services that deliver drugs right to workers’ desks.
Genstar Capital is to acquire global provider of health outcomes research services eResearchTechnology for $8.00 per share in cash. Completion of the acquisition is subject to the satisfaction of closing conditions.
In court ruling on health care law, impact on stocks is high and uncertain. How they may fare
11 facts about the Affordable Care Act
The average per capita cost of healthcare services covered by commercial insurance and Medicare programs increased by 6.14% over the 12-months ending April 2012, Standard & Poor’s Healthcare Economic Indices show.
How Low-Cost Health Innovations Yield Big Savings
EPharmaSolutions To Acquire Global Patient Recruitment Firm Polaris BioPharma
Running a better patient-centered medical home (PCMH) healthcare center may be more costly, researchers found.
The state-federal program that covers 60 million poor and disabled people would be greatly expanded under the health-care reform law, adding 17 million people starting in 2014. But if the entire law is struck down, states for the first time since 2009 would be free to tighten eligibility and make it more difficult for people to apply.
Attorney General Lori Swanson, who sued the Chicago-based company in January over alleged violations of privacy law, raised new claims today in a bid for permission to revise her complaint against Accretive for the second time.
To ease patients’ transition to home and to prevent readmissions, Fairfield Hospital received a grant in November to participate in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Community-based Care Transitions project of the Partnership for Patients initiative.
U.S. health officials say the number of young adults with medical coverage grew by more than 3 million since the new health care overhaul took effect.
Frazier Healthcare and Catalent Pharma Solutions, Inc., today announced they have closed the purchase and sale of Catalent’s U.S. commercial pharmaceutical packaging operations to Frazier.
ESO Solutions Inc., an Austin-based maker of software for the pre-hospital health care market, raised $4 million in funding from Austin Ventures. The Series B round will be used to bolster sales and marketing, among other growth efforts.
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services posted two separate sets of data that provide nationwide statistics on its Recovery Auditor program.
Snapshots of 10 states with the biggest gap between pension assets and long-term obligations
Health-Care Ruling Cloaked in Secrecy Spurs Guessing Game
Ipad Toting Doctors Spur Venture Funding in Medical Apps
Medicare’s fee-for-service benefit design should be changed to provide better protection against high out-of-pocket cost sharing and to create incentives to encourage beneficiaries to make better healthcare decisions, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) said
The Supreme Court’s imminent decision on the Affordable Care Act will trigger a political firestorm whether they accept the legislation in its entirety, throw out every page of the 906-page bill or do something in between
Recession-plagued states diverted scarce money away from pensions to pay for more immediate concerns, leaving a $757 billion hole in the retirement funds covering millions of public employees, according to a study released Monday.
Some big employers are beefing up their clinic offerings further with a host of add-ons, including physical therapy, dental and vision exams, mental health counseling and even acupuncture and massage
Covering all the bases ahead of a momentous Supreme Court ruling, the Obama administration plans to move ahead with major parts of the president’s health care law if its most controversial provision does not survive
Axial Exchange has acquired mRemedy, a company formed in 2009 by DoApp and Mayo Clinic to offer a mobile healthcare platform to healthcare providers. Axial Exchange is backed by a syndicate of top venture capital firms, led by Canaan Partners.
Premera Blue Cross, a Washington State-based insurer, has reduced its healthcare costs by increasing the fee-for-service reimbursements it pays to some of its physicians.
Look for a jump in spending as more provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act are enacted.
Some stories have fueled suspicions among independent pharmacies that CVS Caremark is capitalizing on Medicaid changes to expand its retail business at the expense of locally owned pharmacies.
A program to fight fraud in the Medicaid health system for the poor has cost the U.S. at least $102 million in auditing fees since 2008 while identifying less than $20 million in overpayments,
Regional health information exchanges team up with IBM and other IT vendors to build the massive Statewide Health Information Network of New York.
Many parents have experienced the angst of a crying baby with an ear infection. Some 30 million medical visits in the U.S. alone are due to pediatric ear infections each year. A startup called CellScope has developed a device that could make such visits unnecessary.
Hospital units specifically tailored to care for elderly patients could cut national health care costs by up to $6 billion annually, according to a new UCSF study.
The board of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest U.S. pension fund, increased premiums it charges retirees for health-care insurance by 9.6 percent.
If the Supreme Court decides to strike down the health-care law’s requirement that almost all Americans have health insurance by 2014, it could translate to cutting a “few hundred billion dollars” from projected spending
Norwest Equity Partners announced that it has acquired Pentech Holdings, Inc. Pentec is a leading national provider of specialty infusion services to patients who require access to complex pharmaceutical products and services outside of the hospital setting.
Norwest Equity Partners, a leading middle market investment firm, announced today that it has made a $50 million equity investment in GoHealth, a Chicago-based technology company.
An aging population, improving economy and President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul will push spending on medical services to almost 20 percent of U.S. gross domestic product by 2021, the government projected.
On Friday House Republicans released more documents that expose the collusion between the health-care industry and the White House that produced ObamaCare
Ridgemont Equity Partners, a middle market buyout and growth equity firm, today announced the closing of a majority equity investment in Hometown Urgent Care, a leading provider of urgent care medical services. The financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
The Wellness Network, owner of The Patient Channel and The Newborn Channel, today announced that it has acquired HealthStyle Press. HealthStyle Press publishes America’s Health Guides™
If you said insurance companies or the government, you’re only half right. Because the prices your insurance company pays are based on a set of values listed in a phone-book sized directory of billing codes.
Has recession accomplished what insurance companies, managed care, mythical death panels, government bureaucrats and dozens of pilot projects failed to do – that is, bend the cost curve?
Billions of dollars in drug savings for Medicare beneficiaries may come to an end if the Supreme Court overturns the 2010 federal health law, a drug industry spokesman said Tuesday.
The average monthly charge for the 13.1 million people on Medicare Advantage fell $4 to $35, and is down from $44 in 2010, the Kaiser Family Foundation said today in a report.
Economists have been puzzling over whether a three-year slowdown in the growth of health-care spending, prompted by the economy, portends a permanent change. Federal projections indicate that isn’t the case.
The total number of days spent in the ICU and overall length of stay decline when hospital patients are continuously monitored using contact-free sensors, according to a new study.
Streamlining administrative procedures in healthcare would save the system some $40 billion per year, according to a new report from the Center for American Progress.
State revenues are finally returning to pre-recession levels, but the growing cost of providing health care for the poor is leaving most governments in dire fiscal straits
Ready or Not, Genomics is Coming to a Hospital Near You
The national blood testing lab Quest Diagnostics has been handing thousands of Southern California Medicare patients with diabetes a “non-coverage” notice called an “Advance Beneficiary Notice of Noncoverage,” or ABN
One of the nation’s largest insurers said early Monday it would continue to follow some of the rules in the federal health law that are already in effect
Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. today announced the acquisition of Broker Benefit Services, L.L.C. in Chesterfield, Missouri. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
The private equity arm of OMERS has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Lifeways from August Equity for an undisclosed sum. Lifeways is the UK’s market leading provider of supported living services for adults with learning disabilities.
Ms. DeParle reassured the lobbyist. Although Mr. Obama was overseas, she wrote, she and other top officials had “made decision, based on how constructive you guys have been, to oppose importation” on a different proposal.
UnitedHealth Group Inc. said it will offer some benefits and consumer protections created by the U.S. health-care overhaul even if the law is struck down by the Supreme Court. The exception: Those involving people with pre- existing illnesses.
IntegraMed America Inc., which develops and manages health care facilities that specialize in fertility and vein care, is being acquired by a group led by one of its shareholders, Sagard Capital Partners LP, for about $168.6 million.
Republicans say Obama administration wasn’t transparent on health-care law
While the U.S. health system has the highest per capita cost of the 12 nations studied — spending 17.6% of its gross domestic product on healthcare — it ranked at the bottom in terms of readiness to implement a value-based care system
GE and Microsoft announced they have completed the formation of Caradigm™, a 50-50 joint venture aimed at enabling health systems and professionals to use real-time, organization-wide intelligence to improve healthcare quality and the patient experience.
CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield will pay out around $23 million to doctors whose patients’ health care costs came in lower than what was expected.
Health IT specialists will soon want to know more about a field called geo-medicine, which combines geographic information system (GIS) software with clinical databases to provide insights that might improve individual and population health
Fees that health insurers will be required to pay the U.S. government starting in 2014 will give nonprofits such as Kaiser Permanente a market advantage over corporate competitors,
For 14 months, a bipartisan group of 17 states has been quietly collaborating with the Obama administration to help build a foundation for the health-care reform law’s success.
House Republicans on Thursday repealed the medical device tax included in the 2010 health care reform law to help pay for coverage of the uninsured.
The full genetic code of a fetus has been cracked. The technique, used by scientists at the University of Washington, could offer parents safer and more comprehensive prenatal testing in the future. The ethical questions that arise from this kind of testing abound.
The Health and Human Services Department has missed nearly half of its legal deadlines while implementing President Obama’s healthcare law, according to an analysis by the American Action Forum.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) wants to better define the “essential benefits” that non-grandfathered health plans participating in the state health insurance exchanges must offer.
Some hospitals and health systems are starting to figure out there’s a better way to get reimbursed, one that is less stressful for the patient and more efficient for the provider.
Some of the nation’s best-known hospitals get poor grades on patient safety, according to a new Hospital Safety Score released by The Leapfrog Group, the health-care quality watchdog formed more than a decade ago by large employers.
White House threatens to veto House GOP bill repealing tax on medical devices
When U.S. Supreme Court justices picked apart the government’s arguments in defense of President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul, they buoyed the hopes of the law’s opponents that it would be ruled unconstitutional.
The justices will deliver their landmark ruling on the 2010 health care law this month, and the government is in line to reap hundreds of billions of dollars in savings — perhaps more than $1 trillion — if certain parts of it are struck down.
CareFusion Strengthens U.K. Presence With Acquisition of Medical Products Distributor
A hospital billing practice that can leave Medicare beneficiaries on the hook for large medical costs is becoming increasingly common, according to a report released in Health Affairs on Monday.
inVentiv Health Announces Acquisition of Kazaam Interactive
he Supreme Court is expected to announce its ruling on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) this month and speculation about the impact of that decision is heating up on both sides of the “Obamacare” debate.
A new analysis by the non partisan Congressional Budget Office suggests that the U.S. could face another devastating fiscal crisis.
Universal Health Services Inc., of King of Prussia, is pushing further into behavioral health, announcing Monday that it had agreed to pay $500 million in cash for Ascend Health Corp.
One of hospitals’ most vexing problems is absorbing the cost of care from the uninsured. For years, these patients have been called self-pay, but that term is a misnomer.
U.S. Medical Device Backers Face Tough Health Care Vote
Hospitals across the country have been adding programs in palliative care — which focuses on treating pain, minimizing side effects, coordinating care among doctors and ensuring the concerns of patients and their families are addressed — at a feverish pace.
‘Body Area Networks’ should free hospital bandwidth, untether patients
Hanging Up a Hallmark of the Trade, Doctors Swap Pagers for Smart Phones
WellPoint Will Buy 1-800 Contacts to Expand Retail Offering
Booming field of palliative care soothes patients’ pain and may help hospitals’ bottom lines
Futile Cancer Drugs Are Costing the U.S. a Fortune
Health care court ruling could paralyze Medicare
SuccessEHS Announces Acquisition of Integrated Physician Systems
IdentiSys acquires the Identification Division of Claritus Inc., a Nebraska based reseller
The New Normal In Health Insurance: High Deductibles
Under pressure to reduce fraud, the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services is turning to local contractors to manage a two-pronged approach to rooting out sham claims.
Wellness Center USA, Inc. Signs Agreement to Acquire CNS Wellness, LLC
Vita Advisors, LLC is a research-based strategic advisory firm serving the health care industry.
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