By Jay Greene http://www.crainsdetroit.com With the jobless rate in Michigan hitting levels not seen in two decades and people losing their health insurance or reducing coverage to save on premium dollars, hospitals are overhauling their billing and collection systems to stem the rising tide of bad debt and charity care that is chipping away at […]

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By ERIC HARTLEY http://www.hometownannapolis.com Dr. Laurie Poss has a message for the health insurance industry: “We don’t want to play anymore.” For years, Dr. Poss has been feeling more like a factory worker than a family doctor. With insurance reimbursement averaging $23 a patient, her practice has become an assembly line.

By Gail Scott CRM Buyer – The Essential Guide for CRM System Purchasers Sometimes, all a dissatisfied patient needs to hear is an apology. Sometimes, corrective action is required. Either way, healthcare staff can be trained to deal with patient complaints — if they don’t, patients will simply go elsewhere for treatment. Healthcare organizations have […]

By PHIL GALEWITZ http://www.palmbeachpost.com BOYNTON BEACH — Palm Beach County’s hospitals are balking at paying a collective $1.1 million a year to ensure that residents seeking help at an emergency room have 24-hour access to a neurosurgeon. Hospital officials say they should not have to bear most of the burden of providing the emergency coverage. […]

by Felice Baker Landing page Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions Inc. is signing an increasing number of physician groups on to the Allscripts Electronic Health Record and Practice Management solution, which—on top of the October merger of Allscripts and Mysis— led to a 29 percent surge in the company’s revenue to $128 million in the quarter ended Nov. […]

By PAULINE W. CHEN, M.D. http://www.nytimes.com In response to my recent column on patients trusting doctors too much, several readers wrote in about the difficulty of finding or sifting through information on doctors and diseases. Many asked for suggestions, so a couple of weeks ago I contacted several nationally respected leaders in family medicine, pediatrics, […]

by Janice Francis-Smith The Journal Record

By Alex Costello http://www.zwire.com Faced with the unenviable task of closing the largest deficit in New York state history – $13.7 billion for 2009-10 – Gov. David Paterson has created a budget that makes cuts in nearly every category, while increasing some taxes. One of the many items facing dramatic reductions is the state’s Medicaid […]