Obesity, tobacco use among targets of state’s health priorities
Indiana health officials are targeting infant mortality, obesity, tobacco use and other health priorities in a new five-year plan aimed at improving the health of Hoosiers.
Health Care Costs
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CBO: No great savings from health reform
Don’t expect the health reform law to tame health care costs. That’s the conclusion of the director of the Congressional Budget Office, who also suggested some of the simplest ways to moderate costs would be to roll back some of its key provisions.
Exchange could snag 1.1M Hoosiers
An estimated 1.1 million Hoosiers will obtain health insurance through a yet-to-be-created online exchange, according to the latest estimates from the task force guiding Indiana’s response to the 2010 health reform law.
Riverview scoops up doctors from American Health Network
Nine family-practice doctors are set to leave their large physician group and join Noblesville’s Riverview Hospital, more than tripling their revenue-generating potential.
Study: Medicaid better than nothing
Health care reform will add roughly 500,000 Hoosiers to the Medicaid program and, in spite of great criticism of that expansion, a new study suggests Medicaid coverage does help consumers get more care, have fewer unpaid bills and feel better.
STUMPP: Docs’ loss of independence driving up health care costs
The fact is that hospitals are paid three to four times for physician ancillary services.
Employers face messy decision to drop health insurance
Companies that drop insurance coverage could, without spending any more money than they are now, give workers an 11-percent raise or else help them save as much as $2,000 per year buying health coverage in one of the exchanges, IBJ calculations show.
WellPoint goes online to educate about ER use
Health insurer WellPoint Inc. has enlisted Google Maps for new websites that help patients think twice before they visit an emergency room for care that a less-expensive retail health clinic could handle.
Troubled economy fueling hospital deals
Battered by stagnant population growth and blue-collar job loss, Howard Regional Health is merging with Indiana University Health—a deal that reflects the challenges faced by hospitals in Indiana’s outlying cities.
Community Health adopts low-cost mantra
Community Health Network has embarked on a strategy to become a low-cost, high-output machine in order to survive the coming harsh economic environment that an aging population and expanded health care coverage promises for hospitals.
Growth in drug spending to slow as generics rise
The annual growth rate in spending on drugs may be cut in half over the next five years as people opt for less expensive generic medicines over brand-name treatments, a health-care research group said Wednesday, highlighting the challenge pharmaceutical firms like Eli Lilly and Co. are facing.
VCs: Health benefits will be defined contribution
Increasing government involvement in the health insurance market will have the counter-intuitive effect of making the industry more consumer-driven, concludes a new report from a health care venture-capital firm.
Health care providers opening to technology
Some health care system are finally allowing online scheduling.
MANTOOTH: Companies bogged down by employees’ poor health
The problem is, too many people make unhealthy choices and the consequences of these choices become everyone’s problem.
Reform could create more ’boutique’ doctors
Health reform could accelerate trend toward two tiers of care, with concierge services like Dr. Matt Priddy offers at the top and long waits and minimal attention at the bottom.
IU Health LaPorte Hospital eliminates 112 jobs
Hospital President and chief executive officer Thor Thordarson said in a news release the jobs cuts were necessary because of the higher costs facing health care providers.
State slow to move to money-saving home health care
Indiana taxpayers are paying about $300 million a year in nursing home costs despite a state law that would allow the state to save millions while keeping many elderly and disabled Hoosiers in their homes or with family members.
Anthem: Global payments coming back
Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield’s vision for accountable care organizations foresees doctors and hospitals shifting to global capitation payments and employers getting bigger discounts if they allow their workers access only to health care providers in a specific organization.
State’s top anti-smoking agency could be abolished
Indiana Tobacco Prevention and Cessation, formed in 2001 and funded by money from a settlement with the tobacco industry, may be consolidated into the state Department of Health as a budget-cutting measure.
Indiana’s anti-tobacco agency’s first decade mixed
Indiana Tobacco Prevention and Cessation officials acknowledge they still have work to do in a state that in 2008 had the nation's highest smoking rate and still has more than 1 million smokers.