What You Should Know: - NCQA announced that it has been awarded a $18M, maximum 5-year contract from the CMS Office of Minority Health to advance health equity and reduce health disparities. The project, called the Health Equity Accelerator builds on NCQA’s strong foundation of work at the intersection of health equity, health care quality and health outcomes research, as well as NCQA’s longstanding relationship with CMS OMH. NCQA previously supported CMS OMH as the prime contractor
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Health IT | News, Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
DHA Awards Amwell & Leidos $180M Contract to Power Military Hybrid Care Program
What You Should Know: - Amwell and Leidos have been awarded a “next-generation contract” by the U.S. Defense Health Agency (DHA) to deliver a hybrid care platform to power the DHA’s Digital First transformation. This initial 22-month contract is valued at up to $180M; the project will start at five initial sites followed by a phased enterprise-wide rollout. - While this task order is for the first phase of the program, the DHA Digital First program will support the entire
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4 Tips to Alleviate Burnout, Quell the Great Resignation in Nursing
When it comes to the Great Resignation, forget office workers – the real wave of resignation is coming from nurses. For many months post-COVID, nearly every headline, or so it seemed, was about office employees, their career paths, and the return to the office. What was underreported then – and continues to be – is that the Great Resignation came in full force for nurses. The dynamics in healthcare are always complicated: Costs are going up, margins and reimbursements are shrinking, and
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Curana Health, Innovaccer Partner to Accelerate Value-Based Care for Seniors
What You Should Know: Today Innovaccer Inc. announced that Curana Health, an innovative, fast-growing healthcare organization on a mission to improve the health, happiness, and dignity of senior living residents, is expanding its partnership with Innovaccer to meet strong market demand for its services, and to support the expansion of its value-based programs for high-risk populations nationwide.Last year Innovaccer announced that Curana Health had
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6 Digital Health Executives Share Key Takeaways from HLTH23
We reached out to six digital health executives for their key takeaways and reflections from attending the recent HLTH23 conference. Patches Seely MBA, BSN, RN, Executive Vice President of Clinical Solutions, Carenet Health "The energy of everyone I connected with was very encouraging. These are difficult times in healthcare, but I often heard people saying, "I'm not sure how exactly we will partner, but let's figure it out." The collaborative atmosphere spurred productive conversations
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DaVita, Google Cloud to Develop Customized Clinical OS to Transform Kidney Care
What You Should Know: - DaVita Inc. and Google Cloud are teaming up to create a new clinical operating system that sets a foundation for streamlined kidney care for more than 200,000 DaVita patients. - Built on Google Cloud infrastructure and utilizing AI and analytics tools co-developed by the two companies, DaVita's Center Without Walls (CWOW) is now live across the organization's 2,700+ dialysis centers nationwide. - With the deployment, DaVita has moved from a
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Why Avoiding Costly Coding Mistakes Is More Critical Than Ever
In May 2022, a California doctor was sentenced to nearly eight years in prison for his involvement in a $12 million Medicare fraud scheme. His crime: performing unnecessary vein ablation procedures on patients, and using incorrect billing codes to receive larger reimbursements. He received $4.5 million in reimbursements from Medicare over a three-year period. Compared to this example, most instances of “upcoding” and “overcoding” are not as malevolent or expensive. But even an
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Waymark Secures $42M to Expand Community-Based Care for Medicaid Patients
What You Should Know: - Waymark, a San Francisco, CA-based Medicaid provider enablement company raises $42M in new financing to scale technology-enabled, community-based care for primary care providers and their patients enrolled in Medicaid programs. The round was led by Lux Capital and CVS Health Ventures joins as a new investor. - Existing investors Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and New Enterprise Associates (NEA) also participated in the round. The investment consists of $22M in
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HIMSS Appoints New Chief Financial Officer & General Counsel
What You Should Know: - HIMSS announced it has appointed Elizabeth Slater Jasper as general counsel, and Anne Tuzik as its new chief financial officer. - Jasper comes to HIMSS after serving for 14 years as the chief legal officer, general counsel and corporate secretary for the National Service Office for Nurse-Family Partnership and Child First, an organization that oversees the national replication of maternal, infant and mental health evidence-based
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Innovation Key to Tackling Medicaid Redetermination Challenge
As a result of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), Medicaid programs were required to keep citizens continuously enrolled through the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE). These continuous enrollments ended on March 31, 2023, resulting in what many call the unwinding of Medicaid. In June, the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) estimated that between 8 million and 24 million people will lose Medicaid coverage during the unwinding of the continuous enrollment provision. The
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