The independent source for health policy research, polling, and news.
361 - 380 of 389 Results
The government is laying out plans to use payment incentives to promote higher quality care, but physicians say the new system may be hard on solo practices and small groups.
PACE, a little-known Medicare program that helps keep older people in their own homes, is allowing for-profit companies in. Tech and venture capital have expressed interest.
A year after settling billing disputes with 2,022 hospitals for 68 cents on the dollar, the government has revealed who got paid and how much.
Report portrays Affordable Care Act’s individual market as improving with rising enrollments of healthier, lower-risk consumers, a performance that clashes with recent complaints from some large insurers.
Intensive training for such aides helps reduce repeated ER visits and hospitalizations of elderly disabled people, a pilot project suggests.
Of the 102 hospitals that received a five-star rating, few are among the elite generally praised for great care.
By Aug. 1, Republican Gov. Matt Bevin is expected to ask the Obama administration to approve significant changes on many Medicaid enrollees, including monthly premiums and a work requirement.
The government will soon give hospitals one to five stars to sum up their quality. Some safety hospitals and teaching hospitals won’t fare as well as other facilities.
Though the CDC’s new prescribing guidelines follow a theme of less is more, another federal agency’s patient satisfaction surveys include questions about pain management that some say encourage doctors to prescribe the highly addictive medicines.
Medicaid spends billions on unintended pregnancies, and federal officials say better use of long-acting contraceptives, such as IUDs, offer advantages for women and are cost-effective.
Investigators from the GAO call for HHS to improve oversight of the Medicare appeals process and streamline it to make sure repetitive claims are handled more efficiently.
Researchers report that performance standards set by federal health officials may have led to many patients being dropped from transplant lists without improving survival rates.
New research highlights the paradox in the federal program to improve hospital quality.
The effort, which will replace a controversial reimbursement schedule that began in 1997, is designed to move away from paying for quantity of services and focus instead on quality.
The “overall hospital quality” rating is designed to help consumers who are sometimes confused by the variety of quality measures that the government already provides. But members of Congress had asked for the delay because of concerns that the methodology for the stars was not accurate.
The proposal that Medicare made this month to better control prescription drug costs involves testing strategies used with some success in the private sector.
A new policy preserves Cigna’s access to bonuses while the insurer fixes “widespread” failures in its Medicare plans.
The share of Medicare Advantage members enrolled in plans with high star ratings has almost doubled since 2013, earning bonuses for private insurers who offer them.
A Medicare trial aimed at averting billing fraud and waste in nonemergency ambulance service in eight states is drawing complaints from patients’ families and ambulance companies.
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson will meet with federal officials to negotiate the future of the state’s Medicaid expansion program, which leading Republicans say could be killed if it’s not changed.
© 2026 KFF