Health System

Health officials are warning of an unusually harsh flu season; Ascension and Providence St. Joseph Health are in talks about a possible merger; and heavy traffic is expected as the final week of ACA sign-ups begins.

After a year-long process, Shawnee Mission Health (SMH) is now a certified member of the MD Anderson Cancer Network, the top ranked cancer center in the US. The 2 will work together to raise the standard of cancer care in the Kansas City metropolitan community through patient-centered care.

At the National Comprehensive Cancer Network's Oncology Policy Summit, a physician administrator from the MD Anderson Cancer Center discussed weaving the patient focus into outcomes measurements.

An evaluation of the use of predictive modeling for primary care resource allocation demonstrated reduced spending and improved quality and patient experience for publicly insured adults.

The healthcare systems in Germany and the United Kingdom are examples of systems that are able to manage costs while improving access to medications; however, it is unlikely that the US will follow these models, explained Gerard Anderson, PhD, of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The authors draw on the experience of past and present payment reforms to suggest principles for successfully designing alternative payment models.

This article details strategies based on principles from psychology and economics that health systems may use to align with physicians.

Results in the current issue of The American Journal of Managed Care show that Texas Health Resources, in collaboration with Healthways, put a care transitions program into 14 hospitals that sharply reduced readmissions through collaborative discharge planning and follow-up.

Many things that need to be refined in order to build successful learning health systems, including an infrastructure that supports learning and research and a better exchange of data and computer information.

Hackers have accessed the personal information of 4.5 million people after the UCLA Health System became the victim of a cyberattack on May 5, 2015.

In a move that will create the largest healthcare system in New Jersey, Robert Wood Johnson Health System and Barnabas Health have signed a merger agreement that will create RWJ Barnabas Health. The merger is expected to be complete in 2016, but the agreement is subject to review by the New Jersey Attorney General.

Between November 2014 and January 2015, The Commonwealth Fund conducted an online survey of innovation centers affiliated with healthcare organizations to learn about their potential role in promoting health system transformation.

Awareness of chronic kidney disease remains low in the United States, yet the prevalence of the disease will rise over the next 15 years, according to a model developed by RTI.

Despite studies suggesting higher spending levels do not necessarily produce better health outcomes, a new paper to be published in the Journal of Political Economy found the opposite to be true with regard to emergency care.

Emory University and WellStar Health System are engaged in formal discussions to create a new, unified health system to provide care throughout metro Atlanta, Georgia, and beyond.

A federal lawsuit accuses the Cleveland Clinic Health System of performing more tests and procedures on patients than necessary in order to obtain more Medicare payouts.

In the wake of Advocate Health Care and NorthShore University HealthSystem's proposed merger, America's Health Insurance Plans is leading the charge to prevent this and similar mergers and acquisitions.

A newly announced merger between Advocate Health Care and NorthShore University HealthSystem will create Illinois' largest integrated healthcare delivery system, serving 3 million patients annually.

HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell announced today the availability of $100 million from the Affordable Care Act to support an estimated 150 new health center sites across the country in 2015.

Ed Cohen, PharmD, FAPhA, senior manager, product development, corporate innovations at Walgreens, explains that patient education and medication adherence are 2 major gaps in transitions of care.

The panelists further explore feedback and its role in pathway adherence.

Dr Yu said that it is crucial for providers' voices to be heard in pathway development.

The panelists discussed and shared examples of how payers and providers are collaborating to develop pathway guidelines.

Seema Sonnad, PhD, associate editor for The American Journal of Managed Care, and director of Health Services Research at The Value Institute at Christiana Care Health System, led a panel discussion that focused on oncology clinical pathway adherence.

Leonard Fromer, MD, executive medical director, group practice forum and assistant clinical professor, Department of Family Medicine, University of California, says that proactivity and community collaboration are the best tools to aid transitions of care programs in new care delivery models.

Despite reform and shifts in health policy, the United States healthcare system ranked last in quality compared with 10 other industrialized counties-just as it did in 2010, 2007, 2006, and 2004.

An analysis examining Medicare data found that the number of elderly beneficiaries receiving narcotic painkillers and anti-anxiety medications drastically increased from 2007 to 2012.

New studies suggest that privately insured patients may receive better cancer care than Medicaid beneficiaries. Although a variety of factors impact patient access to cancer treatment, low-income patients were found to have greater difficulty with navigating health systems.

Health insurance exchanges continue to be a work in progress, at least for several states that are facing ongoing challenges. In particular, 5 states-Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, and Oregon-estimate that it will cost $240 million to fix their existing exchanges, or to transition to using the federal exchange.

There are rumblings that federal lawmakers may be willing to repeal Medicare's burdensome rule requiring physicians in critical access hospitals to make an educated guess that the patients they're admitting will be either discharged or transferred in less than four days.