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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Editor's Note Amazon has launched Amazon Care, a virtual primary care clinic, with an option for home visits from nurses, the September 24 CNBC.com reports. Employees will have an option to see a physician, nurse practitioner, or RN via a mobile app or website, and they can text a nurse…

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Editor's Note Strong evidence suggests that most declines in excess readmissions--after implementation of Medicare’s Hospital Readmission Reduction Program (HRRP)--at poorly performing hospitals can be explained by a statistical phenomenon called “regression to the mean [RTM],” this study finds. In RTM, entities farther away from the mean in one period are…

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Editor's Note There are gender differences in how physicians perceive EHR-related stress, satisfaction, and usability, finds this study. Of 25 ICU physicians who participated in the study, 48% were men and 52% were women. Overall task performance scores were similar, but men reported significantly higher perceived EHR workload stress and…

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Editor's Note Enrollees in large employer insurance plans are facing higher healthcare spending through rising premium contributions and increased cost-sharing, according to an August 14 report from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Healthcare costs outpaced wage growth from 2008 to 2018, with employees spending $4,706 for premiums and $3,020 on out-of-pocket…

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