Posted October 27th, 2011
by Zara Mulley
Welcome to the Fall Colors Grand Rounds! We have several excellent articles from around the healthcare blogosphere for you this week. Enjoy!
HealthBlawgs David Harlow recently attended Health 2.0 in San Francisco and provides us with an excellent summary post about the conference. The highlights: The Health Law 2.0 panel that David moderated, the evolution of data liberation and the tools that will help to facilitate health information exchange (hopefully the many different EHR systems that are being adopted by providers nationwide will eventually be interoperable enough to allow the easy exchange of data), and healthcare social media tools that may reshape the way we view wellness and patient-centered care.
Running A Hospitals Paul Levy writes about academic medical centers (AMCs) and how they might be viewing themselves in a more positive light than they should. Apparently, some AMCs want to be exempt from federal healthcare budget cuts and are pointing to their importance in training the next generation of doctors, their research and innovation in the field of medicine, and their work in urban areas treating especially ill patients. Paul notes that while all of this may be true, AMCs shouldnt be too self-congratulatory, as they also have plenty of flaws and areas in which they could improve both for the sake of their patients and for the training that theyre providing to that next generation of doctors.
Dr. Phil
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Tags: Colors, Fall Colors, Grand Rounds Posted in Insurance News
Posted October 13th, 2011
by Zara Mulley
There is a meeting in the conference room at 9am and the keynote presentation for the meeting is far from being complete. It is another busy day at the office, but nothing a little cup of joe cant overcome. Coffee goes well with a muffin and orange juice in the morning and can be easily transported in a travel mug. The chemical in coffee that provides that extra boost of energy in the morning is of course, caffeine.
The same chemical that gives humans the extra boost of energy in the morning is actually a pesticide produced by the coffee plant to kill off insects that try to eat it.
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Posted in Insurance News
Posted September 27th, 2011
by Zara Mulley
Are you working?
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Tags: Home, Life Insurance Posted in Insurance News
Posted September 22nd, 2011
by Zara Mulley
Narrow Network HMOs
Thousands of employers in California and across the U.S. are eliminating costly physicians and hospitals from their health care provider networks in an effort to reduce health care costs. Since the recession started in 2008, more than 10,000 California employers and public agencies have opted for so-called narrow network HMOs. Such health plans offer fewer choices in health care providers but can reduce an employers spending on insurance premiums by nearly 25% in some cases.
Small Business Favorites
Insurers and employers say the narrow networks are growing fastest among small businesses.
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Tags: Hmo, Narrow Network, Narrow Network Hmo, Network Hmo Posted in Insurance News
Posted August 25th, 2011
by Zara Mulley
Its been a week now since a Federal Appeals Court ruled that the individual mandate portion of the PPACA is unconstitutional. At the same time, they threw out a lower courts ruling that would have invalidated the entire health care reform law. However, my opinion (and that of many others who are familiar with the health insurance industry) is that without the individual mandate, there is little chance of success for the rest of the law. Without a mandate, guaranteed issue health insurance is affordable only for the wealthy. Y
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Posted in Insurance News