After three years of strong growth in healthcare technology funding, investor interest in the space has not abated. Corporate, private equity, and investment banking executives are eyeing more investments in health IT in 2020, according to a survey from KPMG.
(Source: FierceHealthcare, 2020-01-17)
Read More
Hospitals once again sued the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services over its site-neutral payment policy. The final rule reduced Medicare reimbursement rates for procedures conducted in hospital outpatient departments, bringing them closer to what CMS currently pays for procedures conducted in-office and at ambulatory surgical centers.
(Source: MedCity News, 2020-01-14)
Read More
The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission voted unanimously to recommend hospitals receive a 3.3 percent raise in 2021. MedPAC recommended that Congress increase net payments by 3.3 percent but change the structure of the pay boost to close the gap between reimbursement rates for physician offices and hospital outpatient departments.
(Source: Modern Healthcare (free reg. req'd), 2020-01-16)
Read More
New drugs are being approved by the FDA at a faster clip, but the science behind them is weakening, according to a study published in JAMA. That means more drugs are available, but questions remain if they are effective.
(Source: HealthExec, 2020-01-15)
Read More
The national disparity between gross charges for hospital procedures is substantial, at an average of a 297 percent difference between the lowest and highest gross charge for each individual procedure. This could create issues with healthcare price transparency, according to a recent Crowe report. The report titled "Transparent Doesn't Equal Rational: Problems with Transparency Order" looked into the June 2019 executive order on healthcare price transparency which directed HHS to require hospitals and insurers to reveal their healthcare service prices.
(Source: RevCycle Intelligence, 2020-01-16)
Read More
New medical treatments such as gene therapies come with a high price tag -- up to six figures -- and drugmakers are working hard to ensure they can get reimbursed for these medicines in creative ways. Installments plans, subscriptions, and value-based contracts that tie payments to positive outcomes from expensive drugs are all methods currently being used by drugmakers to get paid for these expensive medications, The Wall Street Journal reported.
(Source: HealthExec, 2020-01-14)
Read More
HHS released its five-year roadmap for health IT as part of its ongoing effort to get the government singing from the same sheet of music as it increasingly tries to put health data back in the patient's hands. The plan will act as a blueprint for federal agencies like the Department of Defense and the Department of Veteran's Affairs, along with private sector partners, as they work to make it easier for patients to electronically access health data.
(Source: Healthcare Dive, 2020-01-15)
Read More
Eighty percent of healthcare leaders said their use of data analytics for decision-making and strategic planning is "negligible," according to a Black Book survey. The research found that 95 percent of hospitals and physician group executives have access to data analytics applications, up 32 percent since 2016, but most don't utilize these decision-making tools.
(Source: HealthLeaders Media, 2020-01-15)
Read More
Patients have come to expect a technician to drape their torsos with a heavy lead apron when they get an X-ray. But new thinking among radiologists and medical physicists is upending the decades-old practice of shielding patients from radiation. Some hospitals are ditching the ritual of covering reproductive organs and fetuses during imaging exams after prominent medical and scientific groups have said it's a feel-good measure that can impair the quality of diagnostic tests and sometimes, inadvertently, increases a patient's radiation exposure.
(Source: Kaiser Health News, 2020-01-15)
Read More
Mandatory testing at one of the nation's top hospitals showed that nearly one in eight clinicians age 70 or older had cognitive deficits that were likely to impair their ability to practice medicine independently. While 57 percent of 141 older physicians and practitioners who applied for renewal of hospital privileges at Yale New Haven Hospital demonstrated no cause for concern, the remainder faced yearly re-credentialing or further testing with possible outcomes that included proctored medical practice, resignation, or retirement.
(Source: MedPage Today, 2020-01-14)
Read More
The American Medical Association is partnering with healthcare equity crowdfunding site RedCrow to drive more collaboration between physicians and startup entrepreneurs and investors. The two organizations have launched the RedCrow Hub on the AMA's Physician Innovation Network, an online platform that connects physicians with entrepreneurs to help get physicians involved earlier in the design cycles of new innovations.
(Source: FierceHealthcare, 2020-01-16)
Read More
