A study in Health Affairs finds that greater prescription drug use among Medicaid beneficiaries is associated with a modest reduction in overall spending.
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Billionaire entrepreneur Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong has raised huge sums for two more of his panoply of companies, $150 million for a proteomics lab business and $100 million for an immuno-oncology one. Be interesting to see how all this relates to his population health management efforts.
http://medcitynews.com/2015/09/two-of-patrick-soon-shiongs-nantworks-startups-net-250m/?utm_source=MedCity+News+Subscribers&utm_campaign=446e1408df-MCN+Daily+Email&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5092836c41-446e1408df-408793005According to a Markets & Markets report the population health management market will be worth over $40 billion in annual revenue by 2018. I have no idea what anyone means by that term and 99% of the people who use it don't know what they mean by it either, but $40 billion is certainly a lot more than the amount of cost savings produced by PHM.
http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/population-health-management-market-263411936.htmlGetWellNetwork is helping someone else's shareholders get well by buying Skylight Healthcare Systems. Both companies are in the patient communication in the hospital business.
http://medcitynews.com/2015/09/getwellnetwork-buys-skylight/?utm_source=MedCity+News+Subscribers&utm_campaign=1f166ce3b7-MCN+Daily+Email&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5092836c41-1f166ce3b7-408793005A Peterson-Kaiser tracking brief examines quality indicators for our health system and international comparisons.
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Research carried in the British Medical Journal finds that physician-owned hospitals don't appear to have some of the evils ascribed to them.
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Disruptive-model health plan Oscar Health, which has raised a huge amount of capital at a ludicrous valuation, is having trouble finding customers, but remains optimistic, according to a Bloomberg story. Uhhh, this isn't a business where a fly-by-nite business model is going to get anywhere.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-03/for-health-insurance-startup-oscar-cute-ads-only-go-so-farThe American Medical Association has shockingly discovered that the proposed health plan mega-mergers would hurt competition in many markets!! They are probably right, wish they would look at physician and hospital mergers the same way.
https://commerce.ama-assn.org/store/catalog/productDetail.jsp?product_id=prod2680007&navAction=pushAccentuating the positive, CMS releases the latest results from its Medicare Accountable Care Organization program.
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A report by the agency responsible for overseeing construction of VA health facilities finds rampant mismanagement and cost overruns, with the most glaring example being a Colorado medical center expected to cost triple the original projections, and it still isn't completed. Still think government is good at this stuff?
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/report-faults-va-management-denver-hospital-failures-33521448A paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research examines health spending over the last few decades, including recent years and potential trends.
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