With the Department of Health and Human Services‘ release on Jan. 15 of the final rule for the ICD-10 code set and a supporting transaction standard, the U.S. is finally on the road to converting to the diagnostic coding system that most other advanced countries use. Bending to pleas from physician groups and insurance companies, HHS extended the deadline for complying with the ICD-10...
Health Care Industry Archive
January 2009
As I noted in a roundup last week, Tufts Medical Center has thrown down the gauntlet to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts by refusing to accept coverage by the state’s largest health-insurance outfit unless the Blue agrees to hike reimbursement rates for Tufts doctors and the hospital itself. Tufts patients are already fretting that they’ll have to find new doctors and might...
Abbott to buy Advanced Medical Optics in $2.8B deal – Abbott Labs aims to bolster its medical-device business with the acquisition of AMO, a southern California maker of devices for vision-correction and cataract surgery. The Chicago company will pay $1.36 billion in cash and will assume roughly another $1.4 billion in debt at AMO, a spinout from former parent Allergan. [Source: Chicago...
Health-insurance executives aren’t known either for candor or for embracing the ideas of healthcare reformers, but apparently the new leaders of Cigna Healthcare’s Mountain States Division — recently created by Cigna’s acquisition of local insurer Great-West Healthcare — haven’t gotten the memo. Joyzelle Davis of the Rocky Mountain News recently sat down with...
Well before electronic medical records shot onto the national agenda with President-elect Barack Obama’s pledge to spend $50 billion promoting their use, some folks were already waging a campaign against the widespread use of EMRs. At the time — and this was last April — concerns centered on privacy issues and fear that reliance on EMRs would encourage checklist-focused,...
Tufts Medical plays chicken with Massachusetts Blue Cross — In the latest challenge to health-insurance providers in Massachusetts, the Tufts Medical Center said it will no longer accept HMO coverage from the state Blue Cross Blue Shield unless it boosts its reimbursement rates by the end of the month. The center says the Blue pays Tufts 20-40 percent less than it pays other teaching...
So Cigna has now joined the roll of health-insurance companies who are busy cutting workers as the economy worsens and rising medical costs take their toll on profits and membership. The insurer, which suffered a big loss in a discontinued death-benefit annuity business, said it will cut its workforce by about four percent, or 1,100 jobs, while taking a charge of $30 million to $40 million....
Over the past six weeks or so, a series of Boston Globe articles have revealed a fascinating situation: The state’s top-tier hospitals are raking in the bucks because they’ve forced health-insurance companies to reimburse them at much higher rates than their competitors. The latest story, published last Sunday, prompted Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick to ask a new state panel to...
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