The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is creating the position of chief data officer to improve transparency, agency officials said Wednesday. Niall Brennan, the agency official who will take on the role, will be charged with collecting and disseminating information about Medicare, Medicaid, the ObamaCare marketplaces, the Children's Health Insurance Program and other initiatives. "It's clear how much data transparency will help the country improve outcomes, control costs and aid consumer decision making," said CMS Principal Deputy Administrator Andy Slavitt in a statement.
Americans could find the new insurance rates for the Affordable Care Act in online marketplaces last week. Prices of many plans went up. But just how much depends on how you measured them. Shortly after the numbers were released, think tanks, consultants and reporters all crunched the data to produce varying estimates of what's happening to insurance premiums in the new marketplaces. (The Upshot, of course, had its own take on the numbers.) The bottom line is that it's not easy to say simply whether premiums are going up, or by how much. The health law set up marketplaces that allow for state regulation of insurance and regional variation in prices.
Heavy volume on the newly opened Maryland health exchange website pushed those looking to buy insurance into virtual waiting rooms for up to a half-hour Wednesday morning. Wednesday had been billed as the day the public would gain full access to the newly rebuilt website. Officials and those using the portal said the online delays were resolved later in the day. The hiccup could reflect the level of interest in buying insurance on the site — which officials said was designed to accommodate thousands of users at a time. About 80,000 people have visited the site and nearly 10,700 applications have been started.
From A business perspective, Partners needs a new face, a new voice, and most of all, a new attitude. That's why Kate Walsh's name comes up as a potential candidate to succeed Gary Gottlieb, Partners's outgoing CEO. Walsh, the current president and CEO of Boston Medical Center, is known as a fearless and independent leader who is passionately committed to BMC's mission — serving the city's most needy. Choosing someone like that to head the state's largest health care network would send a powerful message about Partners's reconfigured priorities. It would also be precedent-setting. The Partners's CEO job has always been held by a male physician — and Walsh is neither.
Emdeon, a Nashville-based revenue cycle management and health IT solutions company, will purchase Brentwood-based Change Healthcare for $135 million, the companies announced today. The deal, expected to close later this month, also includes additional contingent payments of up to $50 million based upon Change's attainment of financial performance objectives by the end of 2017, according to a news release. Change Healthcare, founded in 2007, offers cost transparency and consumer engagement tools that employers and health plans can use to reduce health care spending. "Our customers are prioritizing information, insights and capabilities that enable individuals to be better healthcare consumers," Neil de Crescenzo, Emdeon president and CEO, said in the release.
The federal government has told the state that the Osawatomie State Hospital has three weeks to correct problems found in a recent inspections or it will no longer be eligible for Medicare payments. The head of the Kansas agency that oversees the hospital says she's confident that won't happen. Kari Bruffett, secretary of the Department of Aging and Disability Services, assured a legislative committee Tuesday that the state has a plan to help address problems — particularly overcrowding — before Osawatomie is taken off Medicare, The Topeka Capital-Journal reported Osawatomie State Hospital and Larned State Hospital are the only two state hospitals that house patients with severe mental illness.