By Susan Jaffe – Under a new federal law, hospitals across the country must now alert Medicare patients when they are getting observation care and why they were not admitted — even if they stay in the hospital a few nights.
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By Susan Jaffe – A federal judge has accepted Medicare’s plans to try once more to correct a commonly held misconception that beneficiaries are eligible for coverage for physical and occupational therapy and other skilled care only if their health is improving.
By Steven Findlay – Dr. Lee Gross is worried. He has practiced family medicine in North Port, Florida, near Sarasota, for 14 years. But he and two partners are the last small, independent practice in the town of 62,000.
By Michelle Andrews – Instead of buying a health insurance policy to cover their workers, a growing number of small and midsized companies are opting to pay their employees’ medical claims directly, a potentially riskier practice financially called self-insuring, a recent study found.
By Jay Hancock – Retail titan Walmart uses its market dominance to inflict “ruthless,” “brutal” and “relentless” pressure on prices charged by suppliers, business writers frequently report.
By Michelle Andrews – One of the key indicators of the quality of a hospital’s care is how frequently its patients are readmitted within a month after being discharged.
By Jordan Rau – The federal government’s readmission penalties on hospitals will reach a new high as Medicare withholds more than half a billion dollars in payments over the next year.
By Shefali Luthra – It’s 4 p.m., and if you’re a hospital patient, that could be one of the most critical times of the day. Your doctor’s shift just ended, and someone new will take over your care. How these professionals communicate could have major repercussions for your recovery. Those shift changes, also known as handoffs, are prime opportunities for key information about a patient’s condition to get lost in the shuffle.
By Jordan Rau – The federal government released its first overall hospital quality rating recently, slapping average or below average scores on many of the nation’s best-known hospitals while awarding top scores to dozens of unheralded ones. CMS rated 3,617 hospitals on a one- to five-star scale, angering the hospital industry.