August 2018

8 most common medical coding errors

By Morgan Haefner for Becker’s Hospital Review In June, federal officials charged 601 defendants in alleged schemes involving about $2 billion in costs to Medicare and Medicaid, the biggest healthcare fraud enforcement action in U.S. Justice Department history. Government and private health insurer audits have recently revealed several fraudulent or abusive medical billing practices, Kevin B. O’Reilly, editor…

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The doctor is out? Why physicians are leaving their practices to pursue other careers

By Nicole Spector for NBC News “After 20 years, I quit medicine and none of my colleagues were surprised. In fact, they all said they wish they could do the same,” said one doctor. The news that New York University will offer free tuition to all its medical school students, in the hope of encouraging…

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These 11 hospitals closed in 2018: Here’s why

By Ayla Ellison for Becker’s Hospital Review From reimbursement landscape challenges to dwindling patient volumes, many factors lead hospitals to close. Here are the factors that led 11 hospitals to close so far this year: 1. Chestatee Regional Hospital (Dahlonega, Ga.). Chestatee Regional Hospital closed July 26, making it the seventh rural hospital in Georgia to close since…

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Apple is developing custom health information tracking chips

By Susan Morse for Healthcare IT News Apple is looking to hire engineers to develop a custom chip for more sophisticated health information tracking and applications, according to a CNBC report. CNBC said it got the information from a job posting from Apple’s Health Sensing hardware team. The July 10 job summary is for sensor ASIC architects to design,…

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Aprima Medical Software and Dolbey Bring Cutting-Edge Speech Recognition into the Aprima EHR

By APRIMA Medical Software on Cision PR Newswire Integration of highly accurate, cloud-based speech recognition with voice command macros into the Aprima EHR will help make its users more efficient. DALLAS, Aug. 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — Aprima Medical Software, a leading provider of innovative electronic health record (EHR), practice management (PM) and revenue cycle management (RCM)…

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Health Care Goodfellas: Mafia Turns to Medicare Fraud

By Edecio Martinez for CBS News MIAMI (AP) Lured by easier money and shorter prison sentences, Mafia figures and other violent criminals are increasingly moving into fraud involving the government’s Medicare health insurance program for the elderly. Around the U.S., federal investigators have been threatened, an informant’s body was found riddled with bullets, and a woman was…

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Gender Parity in Healthcare

By Tammy Seithel, Director of Business Development at Dolbey EDITOR’S NOTE: Opinions expressed by authors are their own. A recent survey from a Rock Health report took me by surprise. 55% of women believe that gender parity in the workplace won’t be reached for another 25+ years. Wow. As a woman working in healthcare for 25…

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Health insurers are vacuuming up details about you — and it could raise your rates

By Marshall Allen for CNBC To an outsider, the fancy booths at last month’s health insurance industry gathering in San Diego aren’t very compelling. A handful of companies pitching “lifestyle” data and salespeople touting jargony phrases like “social determinants of health.” But dig deeper and the implications of what they’re selling might give many patients…

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10 best, worst states for healthcare

By Ayla Ellison for Becker’s Hospital Review Vermont is the best state for healthcare, according to an analysis by WalletHub. To identify the best and worst states for healthcare, WalletHub analysts compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia on 40 key metrics of healthcare cost, accessibility and outcomes. The metrics range from physicians…

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CMS finalizes rule requiring hospitals to post prices online

By Tony Abraham for Healthcare Dive Dive Brief: CMS on Thursday issued its final rule on the Inpatient Prospective Payment System, cementing the agency’s April proposal to increase transparency by pushing hospitals to post standard charges online in a machine-readable format. The rule doesn’t require posting any more information than hospitals are already mandated to provide…

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