Medicaid

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Medicaid’s Data Gets an Internet-Era Makeover

Steve Lohr | The New York Times | January 9, 2017

Jini Kim’s relationship with Medicaid is business and personal. Her San Francisco start-up, Nuna, while working with the federal government, has built a cloud-computing database of the nation’s 74 million Medicaid patients and their treatment. Medicaid, which provides health care to low-income people, is administered state by state. Extracting, cleaning and curating the information from so many disparate and dated computer systems was an extraordinary achievement, health and technology specialists say. This new collection of data could inform the coming debate on Medicaid spending...

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Medicare Actuaries: U.S. Healthcare Spending to Soar to $5.631 Trillion and 20.1 Percent of GDP in 2025

Mark Hagland | Healthcare Informatics | July 18, 2016

In their July issue, the editors of Health Affairs published the latest estimates of U.S. healthcare spending, developed and revealed by the actuaries of the federal Medicare program. In an article entitled “National Health Expenditure Projections, 2015-25: Economy, Prices, and Aging Expected To Shape Spending and Enrollment,” the authors, predicted that the percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP) spent on healthcare every year across the U.S. healthcare system would grow from 17.5 percent in 2014 to 20.1 percent in 2025 with total spending rising from $3.3013 trillion in 2014 to $5.631 trillion in 2025...

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Morning...Reading Assignment

Timothy Noah | The New Republic | October 25, 2011

My friend Phillip Longman has for three decades been one of America's most creative, common-sensical, and non-doctrinaire thinkers on public policy. Read More »

My Name Is Rob. And I’m A Recovering Doctor.

Rob Lamberts | The Health Care Blog | June 22, 2013

Yeah, I am recovering…doing a lot better, actually.  Things are tough, but they are a lot better since I left my destructive relationship with Medicare, Medicaid, and insurance companies.  I’ve had to learn how to manage my own money (now that I can’t count on them to bail me out any more), but things are looking a lot better... Read More »

Nationwide Exchange Stands On Its Own

Tom Sullivan | Healthcare IT News | October 11, 2012

Marking a bridge’s beginning, ONC on Thursday made it official: eHealth Exchange is standing on its own as a non-federal, non-profit entity. Read More »

Nationwide HIE Corrals 500 Hospitals, 4,000 Practices

Ken Terry | Information Week | February 9, 2012

More than 500 hospitals and 4,000 physician practices and clinics are participating in the Nationwide Health Information Network (NwHIN) exchange, according to Lauren Thompson, program director of the Federal Health Architecture (FHA) program in the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). Read More »

New bill Aims To Remove Coverage Restrictions Of Telemedicine

Erin McCann | Government Health IT | January 4, 2013

A new bill introduced Sunday in the U.S. House of Representatives that, if passed, would expand telehealth services in Medicare and Medicaid programs has garnered the support of The American Telemedicine Association. Read More »

New House Bill Would Boost Digital Health Use In Federal Programs

Staff Writer | iHealth Beat | December 3, 2013

A new bill (HR 3577) introduced by Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.) calls for increased use of digital health technologies in federal programs as part of an effort to reduce health care costs, MobiHealthNews reports. Read More »

New ONC, Health 2.0 Developer Challenges Offer Cash Awards for Medical Apps

Brian T. Horowitz | eWEEK | October 6, 2011

Conference organizer Health 2.0 and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have launched two new developer challenges for health care: "One in a Million Hearts" and "PopHealth Tools Development." Read More »

New State Data On Obamacare Enrollment Trends Show How Scheme Is Failing

Scott Gottlieb | Forbes | December 20, 2013

The White House obfuscates when it comes to Obamacare enrollment results. But some of the individual states that have established their own on-line exchanges (and sidestepped healthcare.gov) have been forthcoming... Read More »

Newsmaker Interview: Aneesh Chopra

Staff | Healthcare IT News | December 6, 2011

[Blue Button] is just a simple idea. The Markle Foundation had a meeting in which they talked about personal health records and what will that future look like and what role would they play in it. And a number of folks, including Adam Bosworth, who was originally one of the founders of XML, said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if there was a little button – maybe a blue button – that would allow patients to download a copy of their information and allow them to transport it wherever they go?

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Next Steps for ACOs

Robert A. Berenson and Rachel A. Burton | Health Affairs | January 31, 2012

Accountable care organizations (ACOs) are networks of physicians and other providers that are held accountable for the cost and quality of the full continuum of care delivered to a group of patients...Will this new approach to health care delivery live up to the dual promises of reducing costs and improving quality of care? Read More »

No, You Can’t Just Go to the Emergency Room—Unless You Want to Go Broke

Tim Murphy | Mother Jones | October 18, 2013

Or: Why I'm so glad I have health insurance. About three weeks ago I was walking home from the grocery store when a group of teenagers demanded my wallet, cellphone, and—for reasons I can't fully explain—gallon of whole milk. Although I made no effort to resist, I ended up with a laceration on my lip that required stitches, fairly intense swelling on both sides of my head that required X-rays, and a bruised rib. [...]

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Not So Fast: CMS Says Meaningful Use Not Dead, New Incentive Program Will Take Time

Mike Miliard | Healthcare Finance | January 20, 2016

One week after Andy Slavitt said meaningful use would be replaced soon, the acting Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator and national coordinator Karen DeSalvo made it clear that the changes would take time and that providers must still follow the current program. Slavitt and DeSalvo in a blog post Tuesday afternoon explained the new regulatory framework would move away from measuring clicks to focusing on care...

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Nursing Home Care May Be Out Of Reach For Many Aging 'Boomers': Study

Robert Preidt | HealthDay | June 30, 2014

With higher rates of illness but fewer adult children to care for them, many of America's baby boom generation may find themselves unable to pay for the nursing home care they need, a new study warns.

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