Editor's Note Concerns about physician shortages have led policy makers to advocate for the greater use of nurse practitioners (NPs). From 2010 to 2017, the number of NPs more than doubled from 91,000 to 190,000, this analysis finds. The growth of NPs, which occurred in every region of the US,…

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Editor's Note Medicare may be overpaying surgeons for postoperative care they provide to patients, according to a new Rand Corporation analysis in the January 23 New England Journal of Medicine. The authors of the analysis suggest that federal officials should incorporate ways to more objectively measure the amount of postoperative…

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Editor's Note This study from the division of cardiology at Dallas’ University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and the Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, challenges concerns about Medicare’s Hospital Readmission Reduction Program (HRRP)--ie, that it leaves patients more vulnerable and increases postdischarge mortality rates. Analyzing inpatient and outpatient…

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Editor's Note In this study, researchers found that over a 3-year period, compared to no participation, participation in Medicare’s Bundled Payments for Care Improvement (BPCI) program was associated with a 1.6% decrease in average lower extremity joint replacement spending with no changes in quality, driven by early participants. When looking…

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Editor's Note The US House of Representatives on December 17 passed a year-end spending bill that repeals several Affordable Care Act (ACA) taxes, including the 40% tax on generous health insurance plans and the 2.3% tax on the sale of medical devices, the December 17 Reuters reports. The bill also…

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Editor's Note Care coordination strategies were found to be associated with high overall hospital quality star ratings from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in this study. A total of 710 general acute care noncritical access hospitals that received star ratings and responded to the 2015 American Hospital…

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Editor's Note This study finds that the estimated cost of waste in the US health care system ranges from $760 billion to $935 billion and accounts for some 25% of healthcare spending. Projected potential savings from interventions to reduce waste, excluding savings from administrative complexity, range from $191 billion to…

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Editor's Note Data from the Affordable Care Act’s Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) shows that Medicare cut payments to 2,583 hospitals on October 1 because of the number of patients readmitted within a month, the October 1 Kaiser Health News reports. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) estimates…

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Editor's Note 2019 continues to be a year of change in the healthcare industry as well as great innovation. HealthStream has broken down the top 10 trends and identifies solutions that can help an organization streamline initiatives and improve outcomes. Among the top trends: Amazon is becoming a major disrupter.…

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Editor's Note When deep learning algorithms were compared with health-care professionals in classifying diseases using medical imaging, diagnostic performance was equivalent between the two. In this meta-analysis of 14 studies, researchers found that deep learning systems correctly detected a disease state 87% of the time, compared with 86.4% for healthcare…

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