Massachusetts: Land of Affordable Health Insurance
The Commonwealth Fund just released a sobering analysis (State Trends in Premiums and Deductibles, 2003–2010: The Need for Action to Address Rising Costs) revealing that total premiums for family coverage…
ACO Update: A Third Horse Enters the Race
A few months ago, we noted that the release of regulations for ACOs would trigger an ACO services race across the healthcare landscape, where market participants would be sprinting to…
PFCD Panel Discussion Promotes Adoption of Health IT
Earlier this week, the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease (PFCD) hosted “Health Information Technology: An Invaluable Tool for Managing Chronic Diseases” at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center. We were honored to…
NCQA ACO Accreditation Overview
The National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) is launching a new accreditation program for Accountable Care Organizations on November 21st. ACO accreditation is an independent evaluation of healthcare delivery organizations' ability to coordinate the…
Behind the Scenes in Washington: Lobbying for HealthCare
I have a lot of family and friends who like to complain that nothing ever gets done in Washington. While it's true that the political process often winds up in…
The Positive Power of Talking Heads
Last week I wrote about the power of patients getting together and trading stories. As I wrote then, meeting in-person is simply unmatched. But now we have something almost as…
Will HITECH Money beThere Tomorrow?
It is a great question with no sure answer. Times are tough as they say. Everything is “on the table” when it comes to the government and its budget and…
Celebrate Nurse Practitioner week!
As proclaimed by Texas Governor and Republican As proclaimed by Texas Governor and Republican presidential hopeful, Rick Perry, it’s Nurse Practitioner week! In celebration of National Nurse Practitioner week, here…
VisionCare’s FDA Approved Telescope Gets Implanted
VisionCare Ophthalmic Technologies, Inc. is a privately-held company that researches, develops, manufactures, and markets proprietary implantable ophthalmic devices and technologies that are intended to significantly improve vision and qual VisionCare…
Price Transparency Is Nice, But All-Payer Is Better
For all the talk about consumer driven medicine (it’s the basis for Republican plans to turn Medicare into a voucher program), why doesn’t anyone talk about pricing transparency in health…
