By Jeffrey L. Cohen Independent practice associations (“IPAs”) are gaining momentum in response to healthcare reform and market changes responding to healthcare reform. In an era when consultants are selling one-size-fits-all solutions, physicians have to consider IPAs as a viable option once again, but they have to fine tune their expectation to recent changes. In …
Tag Archives: medicare
Ignoring Primary Care: Obscuring the Obvious
By Jeffrey L. Cohen Healthcare reform used to imply just regulatory change. As time marches on, it also implies market change. Most pundits agree that, whatever happens to the healthcare reform law, whether or not it is found to be unconstitutional, the healthcare business community is unleashed. Change is afoot! If you follow my nahsaying …
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Head Spinning Post HealthCamp San Diego, Health 2.0 Spring Fling and more
Whew! What a week here in San Diego, and the oven is just starting to warm up in this resource rich county peppered with cutting edge integrated delivery systems, pockets of physician thought leadership, encircled by high concentrations of bio-tech, life sciences and wireless health innovators, including forward thinking academic centers of excellence. What’s all this got to do with …
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Tough Sledding Ahead for the EHR Industry?
Perhaps this exchange best illustrates the clash of culture between the ‘medical boots in the ground’ aka CMIO’s and the EHR industry. The names have been changed to protect the innocent or guilty depending on your perspective. Cast: A really smart and justifiably confident EHR engineer, programmer and system architect for a major EHR company with decent …
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Clinical Integration Key To Successful ACO Development
As posed by Jonathan Bush, President & CEO of AthenaHealth in a superb interview by Matt Holt, aka @boltyboy on Twitter (thanks again, Matt!), at the HIMSS 2011 annual conference in Orlando last week, A/C/O development for some institutionally led ACO initiatives is merely ‘code’ for the license to roll-up, or otherwise acquire physician practices. ‘Danger Will …
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ACO Watch: A Mid-Week Review with William DeMarco
On the Wednesday, March 2rd 2011 program at 11AM Pacific and 1PM Central Time, my special guest commentator is noted author, speaker and consultant William DeMarco, for more information, click here. DeMarco is the President & CEO of DeMarco & Associates, Inc., a national, independent healthcare consulting firm specializing in healthcare delivery system redesign and …
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Leading from the Future: A Thought Leadership Event on Accountable Care Organizations
And so the day/event arrives which brought me from San Diego to HIMSS 2011 Orlando arrives. Leading from the Future kicks off (though apparently there’s been some confusion with the schedule), at 1PM with Lee Sachs, EVP, and Chief Medical Officer, Advocate Health Partners. Advocate is perhaps one of the prototype ‘institutionally lead’, though private …
ACO’s: Now We’re Just Being Silly
By Jeffrey L. Cohen By now, every physician has heard the term “Accountable Care Organization.” They have also heard the term “Irritable Bowel Syndrome,” which elicits similar response. We all know for instance ACOs are being proposed as the new healthcare delivery platform for the masses and that they are more an idea, an experiment, than …
‘Culture Wars’ at CMS?
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH The first declaratory though public announcement on when industry stakeholders could expect the highly anticipated guidance via the first round of a notice of proposed rule making (NPRM) process, was Q4 2010. Subsequent updates has suggested first a January, and now February, release date. Some of the skeptics referring to CMS as a ‘black box’ …
Waiting for CMS
By Gregg A. Masters, MPH While we observe serial revisions in public release dates for the notice of proposed rules on Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), lets play reading the “Berwick Tea Leaves’ particularly with respect to Administrator Berwick’s recent itemization of ‘the common core’ [of ACO’s] to attendees at the recent Brooking’s Event, ‘Achieving Better Care at …
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