Amazon Echo Show Consumer Reports gives a thumbs-up to the new Echo Show from Amazon. The $230 speaker features a 10-inch HD touchscreen and a Zigbee smart home hub. The previous Show sounded OK, but the new model takes a substantial step forward, featuring robust bass and smooth trebles, says Consumer Reports. Most of all, it delivers effective imaging – the sense that the … [Read more...]
PAMA One Year Later
By Jim Poggi PAMA: One year later: Do you feel lucky? Not since CLIA ’88 has a single piece of legislation stirred so much controversy and anxiety in the healthcare and lab communities as PAMA. Under PAMA, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) was under congressional mandate to align Medicare lab test reimbursement with private pay, which was acknowledged … [Read more...]
Home Care Changes Ahead
Feds try to steer home care toward technology, value-based care Expect cheers, complaints or (most likely) both from your home care accounts this year. That’s because changes are coming to the industry in 2019, 2020 and 2021, including: “Remote patient monitoring” has been defined under the Medicare home health benefit, and the costs of such monitoring will be an … [Read more...]
News
IMCO names new director of extended care IMCO announced that Jay Butler will join the company as director of extended care. Butler previously worked for Nestle Health Science, where he held multiple positions in sales and leadership selling adult and infant nutrition, pharmaceuticals, and equipment, most recently as director of distribution and extended care. Owens … [Read more...]
Indulging Your Creative Spirit
By Lisa Earle McLeod Why watching movies can help make you a better businessperson How often do you indulge your creative spirit? Creativity makes you happier and successful. Yet for many people, their work is devoid of creativity. Sometimes it seems like organizations specialize in sucking the creative spark out of people. Roles and departments get siloed … [Read more...]
Physician Practices Question MACRA
Reporting is cumbersome, and clinical benefits and financial rewards are lacking, they say The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is pleased with the way its new payment policy for physicians – better known as MACRA – is working out. But some physician groups don’t share the government’s sunny assessment. The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015, … [Read more...]
Contracting Executive Profile: Jonathan Kepley
IDN Opportunities Jonathan Kepley, Director of Strategic Sourcing Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center Winston-Salem, North Carolina Born and raised in Lexington, North Carolina, about 20 miles south of Winston-Salem, Jonathan Kepley joined Wake Forest in 1995 in the general storeroom. He was promoted to coordinator of the receiving dock, then buyer and purchasing agent, … [Read more...]
Healthy Reps
Sickle cell treatment shows promise Scientists from the National Institutes of Health in December presented early results from a human clinical trial testing a novel gene replacement therapy in people with severe sickle cell disease. The experimental treatment involves removing hematopoietic stem cells from the patients’ bone marrow or blood and adding a therapeutic beta … [Read more...]
PUBLISHER’S LETTER
Slowing Down Time is a funny thing, and a limited commodity, that we all cherish. Or do we? As I write this month’s Publisher’s Letter, I realize how fast the years, months, and days fly by, and how infrequently we stop to smell the roses. For example, last month between Christmas and New Years, I was shopping in a CVS store, and low and behold what did I see? … [Read more...]