Physician Compare, a CMS-operated website mandated by the Affordable Care Act, isn't providing a whole lot of information on most doctors, according to a research letter in JAMA Internal Medicine. Researchers from the University of Michigan used statistical software to estimate the quality and quantity of data available on the platform based on a sample of more than a million physician profiles...
Oscar Health plans to expand the reach of its innovative, tech-savvy insurance plan into six states in 2018. Pending regulatory approval from the states, the move will include the service's return to New Jersey, where it pulled out last year, expansions in existing markets, and brand new launches in Tennessee and Ohio (via the previously announced Cleveland Clinic partnership).
It's a...
It’s hard to characterize what the future of healthcare IT will look like without evoking some form of the word “uncertainty.” With regulatory changes ahead and a fuzzy idea of the economy will look, barriers to innovation are expected. Yet a new survey from VC group Venrock shows many professionals in the industry still expect healthcare IT to grow over the next few years, and even think some...
Healthcare wasn’t exactly priority number one in President Donald Trump’s inaugural address this morning. In fact, despite the apparently looming repeal of the Affordable Care Act, the only reference to healthcare in the whole speech was a vague promise, buried with two or three other vague promises, to "to free the Earth from the miseries of disease”. Whether this is a veiled promise to increase...
The unexpected election of Donald Trump who, as a candidate, was weak on specific policy promises, has mired a lot of industries in uncertainty about their future, but perhaps none more so than healthcare. The Republican party has long sought to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, a landmark piece of legislation that has affected most parts of the healthcare landscape since it was passed in 2010...
Private health insurance company Oscar, which caught on quickly with individuals due to its tech-savvy image and simplified online offerings, has pulled out of two markets. As of this week, the firm will no longer offer individual market plans through the Affordable Care Act in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas and in New Jersey beginning January 1, 2017.
Citing “uncertainties in those two markets” that...
Employee wellness programs have the potential to save money for companies and reduce hospitalizations for employees, so provisions in the Affordable Care Act encourage businesses to implement them. But if those programs include mandatory or incentivized health screenings, they can conflict with another, older federal statute: The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which prohibits employers...
Employers are turning more and more to preventative wellness programs to keep down their employee's eventual healthcare costs, including biometric screenings to determine early risk factors. But when those screenings are mandatory, and incentivized through sanctions for opting out rather than rewards for opting in, does that cross the line into violating employee's privacy? Has the employer...
Two University of New Mexico-trained physicians and a business school professor launched an app, Get Covered New Mexico, to spread information to New Mexico residents about getting covered through the Affordable Care Act.
Professor at the University of New Mexico Nick Flor, Dr. Erin Corriveau and Dr. Kate McCalmont decided to develop the app after Corriveau attended a community meeting in a...
Weight Watchers online portal and app.
This week in mobile health, we saw FDA clearances for Alere and Verizon, trials from Scripps and Qualcomm, and some interesting new products in the consumer health sphere from Beddit, Emotiv, and BioBeats. Some other articles from around the web have also highlighted mobile health trends. Here's some interesting pieces that caught our eyes this week.
The...
