Binary Fountain, which offers health care firms reputation management and patient experience analytics services, has coupled with investors to raise $16 million.
A Government Accounting Office Report will cheer up by reporting that at least $125 billion of your tax dollars are spent on improper payments, with much of that sum being accounted for by Medicare, Medicaid and other health programs.
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-16-92T
Oct072015
Conglomerate Phillips is buying Blue Jay Consulting, which provides consulting for hospital ERs, to bolster its health business.
Telemedicine vendor TelaDoc went public, and in September it released the lockup on insiders, allowing them to sell shares, then last week it reveals that it lost a major customer and the stock falls about 20%. Uhhh, not sure how I feel about that sequence of events. But also shows once again the danger of buying into hyped approaches. Telemedicine is great, but it is ultimately a commodity.
The US isn't the only country bedeviled by inadequate HIT, a well-respected hospital implementing an EPIC system was found by the United Kingdom's Clinical Quality Commission to have serious problems, some of which endangered patient safety.
Even the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan isn't immune from health care cost growth, premiums for that plan are going up an average of 6.4% for 2016, almost twice the rate of the last few years.
A new cost and revenue survey from the Medical Group Management Association finds that practices are spending on average 12% more in 2015 than in 2014 for technology costs, and these costs are up a third since 201o. Total operating costs per physician have risen an average of 12% since 2010. Practices also report significantly greater use of non-physician clinicians like physician assistants and nurse practitioners.
A survey from provider price comparison vendor Vitals finds that most consumers who have serious medical costs also have limited skills and resources to effectively manage those costs.
According to an AIS analysis of public filings, people covered by individual policies cost insurers 12% more than large group members and 15% more than small group enrollees.
The National Committee for Quality Assurance releases its health plan quality scores for 2015, on a 1 to 5 scale. Some interesting reading, most of the big players, including UnitedHealth, Cigna and Blue Cross, have some very poorly rated plans.
Another one of the health plan co-ops created by the reform law bites the dust, as New York regulators close down Health Republic Insurance for insolvency. How's that "these co-ops will provide inexpensive competition to the big guys" rationale working out? And how should taxpayers feel as their tax dollars circle the drain when these co-ops don't repay their loans, which by the way totaled $265 million for Health Republic.
http://www.dfs.ny.gov/about/press/pr1509251.htm
Sep282015
HealthPort, a revenue cycle management vendor owned by New Mountain Capital, is acquiring ECS, a medical record retrieval company.
A blog post in Health Affairs underscores that individual practice variation across physicians may be the most basic unit of health care utilization and cost variation. This variation is likely driven both by physician practice styles and preferences and patient preferences.
Someone needs to explain health insurance to Hillary Clinton. In a supposed effort to help middle-income voters, er, I mean people, she proposes to limit copays on doctor visits. All this will do is drive up insurance premiums and increase consumer premium cost-sharing. There is no free ride.
The Healthy Skeptic is a website about the health care system, and is written by Kevin Roche, who has many years of experience working in the health industry. Mr. Roche is available to assist health care companies through consulting arrangements through Roche Consulting, LLC and may be reached at khroche@healthy-skeptic.com.
The Healthy Skeptic is a website about the health care system, and is written by Kevin Roche, who has many years of experience working in the health industry. Mr. Roche is available to assist health care companies through consulting arrangements through Roche Consulting, LLC and may be reached at khroche@healthy-skeptic.com.