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Groups join in backing ACA subsidies

The National Associati0n of Community Health Centers (NACHC), the American College of Physicians (ACP) and the American Nurses Association (ANA) and statewide primary-care associations (PCAs) representing Community Health Centers in most of the 37 states where federal exchanges are operating have joined in filing  an amicus brief supporting the position of Health and Human Services (HHS) in King v. Burwell in favor of maintaining subsidies under the Affordable Care Act.  

The NACHC’s Web site said:

”In their brief, amici noted that health centers are serving approximately 745,000 enrollees in Federal Exchanges throughout the country, the vast majority of whom have incomes below 200% of the Federal poverty line and therefore are dependent on the federal tax subsidies in order to be able to afford health insurance coverage.  NACHC estimated that an adverse decision by the Court would cost the centers more than $500,000,000, and that while centers would struggle to continue to serve these enrollees as uninsured patients, they would have to cut back on services and on the number of patients they could serve, as well as lay off staff and close some health center sites.”


Video: Philly IT firm has way to simplify managing staffing alerts

A Philadelphia IT startup called Staffluent, promising to  reduce the phone time  that hospitals must spend to find nurses, physicians and support staff from their employee pool to plug shift gaps, has developed a solution to simplify managing alerts and responses.

MedCity News reported that the company conceded that there are some large companies that do  staffing management,  such as Kronos, but, he noted, these companies frequently don’t manage replies well. As past subjects of King Kronos, we agreed with him.

 

 


Medicaid co-payments didn’t change ER use

 

 


Study: ‘Patient navigators’ a boon for hospitals

compass

A study in Pennsylvania  says that nonclinician  “patient navigators” reduced nonemergency hospital emergency-room use  by 43 percent and cut by 60 percent the 30-day readmissions for targeted diagnosis-related groups. This means  that they can save hospitals a lot of money in new Medicare regulation fines.

Further, the study noted, the patient navigators for non-clinical tasks freed up more time to physicians and other clinicians  to focus on tasks that  more specifically required their medical expertise.


Why your next visit to the doctor could be crowded.

 

Bloomberg reports that group medical visits are catching 0n.


Mass. judge rejects Partners’ expansion deal


Guidance for home health agencies

 

Herewith is some guidance on how to interpret and navigate the CMS’s final rebasing rules for home health agencies from Russel Krengel,  a product manager for Kinnser.  Of course, such agencies are becoming more and more important as outpatient services becoming more crucial as many hospitals shrink.

He writes:

“For the lucky, a detailed analysis reveals that the payment changes may actually come in the form of slight payment increases while many others may suffer payment declines of 5% or more. The question then becomes: Considering case mix volume, what is my 2015 reimbursement likely to be? More often than not, it won’t be the small reduction of 0.3% estimated by CMS.”


Study touts med students working in pairs

twins

Research at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development  in Berline found that  medical students ”who worked in pairs to solve diagnostic problems were more likely to arrive at the correct diagnosis than those who worked alone,” MedPage Today reported.

 

”The research divided 88 research volunteers, all fourth-year medical students, into two groups. The first group of 28 worked individually, while the other 60 worked as pairs. Those who worked together arrived at the correct diagnosis 18 percent more often.”

This is good to know, but organizationally, it could often be difficult to arrange for such pairing with all the other duties of medical students.

 


The foggy outlook for ACA-created co-ops

 

 The program was to “foster the creation of qualified nonprofit health insurance issuers to offer qualified health plans in the individual and small group markets,” as a partial way to fill the gap caused by the difficulty of getting the “public option” through legislators and private-sector insurers during the debate over ACA legislation.

The authors write that  ”newly established CO-OPs may be unable to maintain liquidity, disperse risk, lower premiums, exercise leverage, and establish branded statewide integrated care models. Moreover, CO-OPs ‘too small to thrive’ may default on their loans.”

“Viewed in this light, the road ahead is clear in calling for aggressive recruitment of enrollees through competitive pricing and product diversification.”

“At this time, the future of the existing CO-OP program remains promising if uncertain,” the authors say.


Benefits of monitoring low-acuity patients

 

Brian Rothman, M.D., an anesthesiologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, is interviewed on how continuous monitoring of low-acuity patients can improve outcomes.


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