how to improve patient care quality Archives - Page 2 of 3

10,000 Baby Boomers Reach Retirement Every Day, Is the Healthcare Industry Ready?

According to Pew Research and the Social Security Administration, 10,000 men and women reach retirement age each day. If that number seems big – it is. The impact to society will be huge, especially to healthcare. The vast amount of Americans hitting age 65 over the next few years means the number of people eligible […]

Post-Acute Providers Need to Act Now to Offset Potential Medicaid Cuts

Many healthcare professionals – especially those connected to skilled nursing facilities (SNF) – are extremely worried about the proposed tax plan coming out of the House of Representatives. The House recently passed a $4.1 trillion budget plan that promises deep cuts to social programs, including removing nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid’s budget over the next […]

How Data Can Help Healthcare Organizations Grow Their Preferred Provider Network

Hospitals that use a preferred network of post-acute care facilities reduce their readmission rates four times faster than hospitals that don’t. A recent study has found that these providers were able to cut readmission rates from nursing homes by 6.1 percent between 2009 and 2013. Hospitals that did not have a network saw only a […]

CMS’s Proposed New Direction is a Great Opportunity for Healthcare Providers

Voluntary Bundles Are Going to Be One Of Many Valuable Tools With all the rhetoric in Congress about repealing and replacing The Affordable Care Act, it can often get lost in the shuffle that leadership remains committed to value-based care. For example, while mandatory healthcare bundles seem to be dead – healthcare professionals are actively […]

MACRA’s Goal is to Make Lives Better, So Why are Physicians so Worried?

MACRA is coming. The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA) was signed into law on April 16, 2015. It’s a pay-for-performance program that focuses on quality, value, and accountability by rewarding healthcare providers for improving their patient’s overall health. Health and Human Services has stated that its goal is to tie 90 percent of […]

Next Gen ACOs Need to Focus on Post-Acute Care to Succeed

In the initial shift to value-based care, most health systems focused on improving internal processes, in-house spend, and closing care gaps inside their own organizations. This is especially true of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). These organizations largely used internal risk and cost analyses to lower expenses. There was also a learning curve associated with the […]