The CMS post-acute care transfer (PACT) policy and the use of home healthcare helped reduce hospital readmissions for recently discharged patients and lower hospital expenditures, according to a study...
Payers can leverage beneficiary surveys, opportunities to share lessons learned, and social services referral platform data in order to assess the return on investment for social determinants of health...
Health plan provider directories can be a helpful resource for patients, but they are not always accurate. A shared effort from health plans and providers that includes streamlining data collection and...
The National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions (National Alliance) has offered a series of recommendations for employers that may help identify and address workers’ social determinants...
National healthcare spending increased by nearly 10 percent in 2020 to $4.1 trillion, largely due to the spike in federal spending in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a Health Affairs...
Low-value care in pediatric inpatient care has a high price tag, according to a recent study published in JAMA Network Open on pediatric hospital spending for low-value services.
“As...
Going without a coronavirus vaccine can have an impact on healthcare spending in the US, a Peterson-Kaiser Family Foundation Health System Tracker report on unvaccinated COVID-19 patients found.
Based...
Households that had a COVID-19 diagnosis and those with children had higher rates of household healthcare spending and medical bill concerns, according to the...
Employing personalized, in-home chronic disease management services can have a significant impact on spending for seniors with chronic conditions, a study from Avalere found.
“Demonstrating a...
The majority of insured individuals in the United States are concerned about paying their medical bills, with low health literacy contributing to these concerns, according to the MITRE-Harris Poll...
Payers face a variety of challenges in expanding nutritional benefits, particularly due to the lack of ability to measure outcomes, but there are ways to navigate this uncertainty, according to a...
While the coronavirus pandemic has had a terrible impact on measures such as the national mortality rate and health equity, certain measures—such as the prevalence of multiple chronic conditions...
In the year and a half following the Affordable Care Act’s first marketplace open enrollment period, the number of families who had trouble paying medical bills decreased by nearly 10 million....
Humana’s Medicare Advantage value-based care efforts helped improve hospitalization rates and preventive care during the coronavirus pandemic, the payer shared in its value-based care...
Medicaid spending on sickle cell disease treatment and patient outcomes among beneficiaries with sickle cell disease reveal gaps in health equity and opportunities for improving care for...
The mental and behavioral healthcare crisis is striking children and adolescents, but payers can take steps to protect mental healthcare for children as well as for the adults who are responsible for...
Outcomes-based contracts continue to be popular for certain therapies as healthcare costs mount, an Avalere study found.
Avalere’s findings draw on survey responses from 51 insurers and pharmacy...
When the Veterans Affairs department (VA) expanded its health plan network size, enrollee utilization and access to care improved, according to a study published in the JAMA...
Updated 11/1/2021: This article has been updated to refer to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Innovation Center (CMMI) as a singular center. A previous version referred to...
Cost-sharing waivers for COVID-19 hospitalizations have the potential to significantly reduce out-of-pocket healthcare spending, as long as they are comprehensive and cover all hospital-related...
