Featured Report: Examines Help Consumers Will Need Selecting Insurance

This Week's Healthcare News
iHealthBeat
CMS Adds Several New Features to Hospital Compare Website
Apr,25,2013
by:+Staff
Over the past several months, CMS has made several changes to upgrade its Hospital Compare website, HealthLeaders Media reports (Clark, HealthLeaders Media, 4/24).

Background on Hospital Compare

In 2005, CMS began posting quality ratings for more than 3,000 U.S. hospitals on its Hospital Compare website.

The site first included data on adherence to basic clinical care guidelines and later expanded to include additional information, such as patient experience scores, readmission rates, mortality rates and complication rates (iHealthBeat, 3/11). Read Report

ModernHealthcare.com
HHS offers updated guidance on removing disparities, promoting equality in healthcare
Apr,24,2013
by:+ Jessica Zigmond
HHS on Wednesday released enhanced standards to help health and healthcare organizations promote health equity, advance quality and remove disparities in healthcare.

HHS' Office of Minority Health developed the National Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (CLAS) Standards in Health and Health Care, which update initial standards that were released in 2000. In a news release, HHS cited an estimate from its Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality that the cost of insufficient and inequitable healthcare related to racial and ethnic health disparities is more than $1 trillion. A spokeswoman for AHRQ said in an email that the estimate came from a report on healthcare inequalities from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.
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Healthcare Info Security
Breaches: Business Associates' Role
Apr,24, 2013
by:+ Marianne Kolbasuk McGee
In the past month, eight out of 15 breaches added to the Department of Health and Human Services' "wall of shame" tally have involved business associates. And business associates have been implicated in about 21 percent of the 571 breaches affecting 500 or more individuals that HHS has tracked since September 2009.Plus, business associates have been involved in many of the largest incidents,

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Featured Report: Examines Help Consumers Will Need Selecting Insurance
HealthDataManagement
Apr,23, 2013
by:+Joseph Goedert
A report from the Kaiser Family Foundation examines the need for comprehensive assistance programs to help consumers to select appropriate health insurance when mandated coverage begins in 2014.

Coverage options will come from expanded Medicaid eligibility in many states and subsidized private coverage through state health insurance exchanges that are supposed to be operational by October 2013. “The job of consumer assistance will not be limited to a single task,” the report asserts. “Rather, as consumers seek to get and keep health coverage, they may face a series of challenges that assisters will need to address.”

Read Report

Hello Businesses Owner,

I am writing to you because our changing health care system will have a profound effect on all of us. Now that the election is over and the Supreme Court has ruled, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is not going away. It will not be repealed and it is up to us to make sure it will work for small businesses and individuals as it was intended to do.

That’s why I joined the Campaign for Better Health Care’s newly created Small Business Health Care Consortium (SBHCC). This consortium views the needs of small businesses and their employees as a top priority.

And, as a member of the Steering Committee of the SBHCC I am personally inviting you to join our network of small businesses who know that only through our collective voices that will assure that the Affordable Care Act live up to its goal of making healthcare affordable for all.

Discussions around health reform have been confusing and, sometimes, even misleading. It is the goal of the SBHCC to provide factual information about the changes that are already happening and those coming in the near future. The SBHCC discusses the benefits and opportunities of the ACA and what Illinois small businesses need to do to make sure this law will benefit them.

Many key components of the ACA are national in nature. For instance, small businesses currently providing health insurance to their employees could be eligible for a 35% tax credit. And, while employers with fewer than 50 full time employees are not required to provide health insurance, their employees can take advantage of the ACA’s benefits.

Other components will be implemented at the State level and these decisions will either enhance small businesses or provide another hurdle. One important component is that all states must implement a health insurance exchange (marketplace). These exchanges will include a rate review process with defined, easy to understand plans to consider and review side-by-side.

As small business owners we share many of the same, serious business challenges. It is my hope that you and your small business peers do want to learn more about the ACA. Let’s take this opportunity to act collectively to get control of health insurance costs and improve access to coverage. The opportunity to create positive change is now. It is about fairness and choices for small businesses. To that end I like for you to hear my own personal story about how the new healthcare law will effect me.

Please go to this link at Healthcare.gov to see my story Watch My Story

Then Join the SBHCC do not hesitate to contact me with any questions or thoughts. I may be reached at wireheadtec@gmail.com or Wirehead Technology

Sincerely,
Howard Lee
CIO
Wirehead Technology
Tel-312-286-8416