The Basics of ACOs in Less Than 6 Minutes Video

Are you confused about ACOs – what they are, how they function, what their purpose is? We have all heard the term ACO and most of us know that stands for Accountable Care Organization. Stretching past these basics, the waters become a bit more muddied. So what is an ACO and how does it work? Do you have 6 minutes? Following is a great video created by OSF Healthcare. The video gives a great overview of what an ACO is as well as the goals. Some of the highlights include:

New CMS Report Shows Continued ACO Success

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released a new set of quality and financial performance findings on September 16, 2014. These findings showed Medicare Accountable Care Organizations had elevated the quality of care for recipients through preventative health initiatives and collaborative efforts between doctors, hospitals, and care providers.

Can You Afford Not to Appeal Denied Claims?

The Medical Group Management Association actually put a price tag on the cost of managing each denial in your organization’s denial queue: $25-$30 a piece. That cost adds up when you consider that up to as many as a quarter of all claims get denied – meaning that for some hospitals, that $25 per claim price tag could become overwhelming pretty quickly. The first step in the case of any denied claim is determining why it was denied.

Peer Review Demystified

Peer review and quality.

Healthcare is an industry that perhaps has even surpassed car manufacturing in concern with quality measures. And it should be. After all, we’re dealing with human beings, not cars. Peer review often concerns itself with peering closely at quality measures, compliance and safety. Patients are already vulnerable when they enter the hospital, due to illness or injury, so it is everyone’s concern in healthcare to be mindful of what areas of weakness within an organization could be influencing patient outcomes in a negative way.

ACO Prescription: Cure or Disease? Infographic

We would love to hear your opinions on ACOs – the good, the bad, and the ugly. What successes have you achieved? What issues have arisen? How are ACOs seen from a patient perspective?

A Three Pronged Approach to Organizational Analysis

When was the last time your organization performed a SWOT analysis? If you aren’t familiar with SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) it’s a widely used strategy in many industries, not just healthcare, for identifying areas for improvement. You can break SWOT down even further:
Strengths: What sets your hospital apart from all the rest? What can you offer that makes you competitive?
Weaknesses: What puts your hospital and employees at a disadvantage compared to other hospitals? What of these factors can you change?
Opportunities: How can you show your strengths to others?
Threats: What could cause big trouble for your hospital or employees?

ACOs vs Bundled Payments – Can Either Save Healthcare?

Everyone in healthcare knows that something’s got to give – it’s not a matter of “if” but “when” – and to some extent, how? In the arena of change, two major payment players, ACOs and Bundled Payments, are fighting to become the savior of American healthcare. Chances are you’ve already heard plenty about the former; accountable care is the hot topic of the year. Not only has it made headlines, but it’s been the topic of industry wide webinars and education.

Will Medicare Cover Telehealth?

No doubt that in the coming years, telehealth will become a fundamental part of how doctors diagnose and treat patients. Of major concern for both providers and patients is, if this new technology becomes commonplace, who will pay for it?

Telehealth, like most medical interventions, isn’t cheap. In order to have computer systems that can be used for teleconferencing, as well as the HIPAA compliant programs for videos [editor’s note: of which Skype is not]. Then, of course, after the initial purchasing costs come the costs of implementation, the cost of training and the cost of ongoing maintenance of the programs and systems.

5 ED Throughput Measures Your ED Needs to Face Ebola

In the light of the first-ever confirmed Ebola case in the United States, questions of procedure and preparedness are humming throughout all fifty states. The patient, a Liberian man who had left Africa and arrived in Texas before symptoms began, has become the center of media attention this week. So to, has the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital become something of a media darling – in so far as they are being heavily scrutinized.

Will Health Websites be Safe for Patients?

When you do a Google search, chances are you know to look for ‘reputable’ websites in order to find answers to your inquiry. Generally speaking, the breakdown of various “dots” would be as follows:

.com is for commercial, for profit sites

.org is for nonprofit organizations (like hospitals)

.net or .biz which can be perfectly legitimate but don’t carry quite as much credibility as a registered .com domain

.gov which is reserved for government institutions and programs

.edu – which is always linked to an educational institute of some kind.