Legal

Physicians and consultants share advice on communicating electronically with patients.

A recent decision on a lawsuit over 'out-of network' payments carries potential repercussions for reimbursement rates. Discover how your practice may be affected.

According to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, health information is not individually identifiable if it does not identify an individual and if the covered entity has no reasonable basis to believe that it can be used to identify an individual.

In the report “Professionalism in the use of social media,” the American Medical Association offers advice for physicians.

Privacy, security, professionalism remain top priorities as use of e-messaging, patient portals, and social media grows.

In an attempt to get past politics and ideology, a group of researchers recently published a report in Health Affairs that examined the health systems in Canada, England, France and Germany for insights on how the United States could better control costs.

President Barack Obama's proposed 2014 budget includes roughly $300 billion in Medicare savings, reforms to the sustainable growth rate, and cuts to graduate medical education.

If you thought demonstrating meaningful use annually to receive electronic health record incentive payments was enough, think again.

A bipartisan bill introduced in Congress would establish a 5-year pilot to test four models aimed at educating and training primary care physicians in an effort to build up the PCP workforce.

Jay Wolfson, DrPH, JD, is the Distinguished Service Professor of Public Health and Medicine and associate vice president for health law, policy, and safety at the University of South Florida in Tampa. He recently spoke with Medical Economics Editor-in-Chief Lois A. Bowers, MA, about the ways in which your future colleagues are being educated-and why.

The comprehensive, nationwide effort that the Physician Payment Sunshine Act represents is desperately needed, says Steven Nissen, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic. Others, however, have concerns about privacy, accuracy in reporting, and patients' ability to understand reported information.

The Sunshine Act will go into effect soon. Here's what you need to know to keep on the right side.

Cuts to Medicare and other services will not only cost healthcare jobs; they also are putting financial pressure on doctors.

Most physicians agree that Medicare's sustainable growth rate (SGR) - the formula the program uses to determine health provider reimbursement - is broken, but what's less clear is how to fix it.

The Medicare Audit Improvement Act of 2013, introduced to Congress today, is designed to address critical operational problems that exist with the Medicare recovery audit program and ensure that Medicare recovery auditing is efficient, transparent, and fair, according to its co-sponsors in the House of Representatives.

Accountable care organizations aim to control healthcare costs, enhance quality in healthcare, and improve population health. But what does "improving population health" really mean? This is the question asked in a viewpoint article in the March 20 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Medical groups reported an uptick in the rate of physician turnover in 2012, as the vast majority of groups who responded to a survey plan to hire more primary care physicians this year.

Medical student interest in primary care seems to be increasing, but more is needed to address the needs of the healthcare system, say organizational leaders.

Family practices top all other specialties as the most in-demand acquisition targets in the eyes of hospital executives, according to a recent survey by a healthcare staffing firm.

The stand-alone fee-for-service payment could disappear by the end of the decade if a plan newly released by the National Commission on Physician Payment Reform is followed.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s ability to protect individuals from preventable infectious diseases is likely to be hampered by sequestration, and analysts from research and consulting firm GlobalData argue that the cuts ultimately will fail to accomplish the goal of decreasing federal spending.

Physician groups are among the many voices chiding federal lawmakers for their failure to avert billions of dollars in arbitrary spending cuts that will result in a cut to Medicare reimbursements.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced new proposed policies this week that the agency says will result in increased benefits for beneficiaries.

As it looks increasingly likely that Congress won't reach a deal this week to head off broad cuts to federal programs known as sequestration, physicians should begin preparing themselves for across-the-board 2% cuts to Medicare reimbursement.

The Affordable Care Act is expected to increase the number of insured Americans by more than 30 million by the time it’s fully implemented, but one provision of the act already has resulted in the addition of an estimated 3 million insured.