Healthcare plans

A sluggish economy hasn’t slowed the nation’s health care consumerism movement, according to a recent analysis by the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

Troubles are mounting for a health insurer over loss of several server drives containing enrollee and employee information.

Even after plan design changes, employers can expect their health care costs to increase by 7% in 2011, a sure sign that an aggressive approach to plan design is here to stay, finds research by the National Business Group on Health and Towers Watson.

Benefit professionals have tirelessly lobbied for an end to the so-called use-it-or-lose it rule governing pretax employee contributions to a flexible spending account, which is now the centerpiece of a bipartisan proposal in Congress.

Four medical associations representing more than 350,000 primary care physicians have issued new guidelines for patient-centered medical home recognition and accreditation programs.

A new report from Kalorama Information, a New York-based research firm, estimates the U.S. electronic health records market at nearly $15.8 billion and predicts it will increase to $31.9 billion in 2015.

Democratic senators on Tuesday expressed concern that companies hired to help pay and oversee medical claims under the Medicare health insurance program may have costly conflicts of interest.

Last month, the Center for Health Value Innovation released its 2010 Value-Based Design Report - a study of more than 170 companies, representing more than 4 million covered lives, produced in partnership with Buck Consultants - which takes the national temperature on how value-based benefits designs are progressing in U.S. workplaces.

Some of you may remember exercise instructors such as Jane Fonda or the late Jack LaLanne. When I was a kid, my mom had Jack LaLanne exercise books.

For once, we weren't trying to innovate, iterate or invest in something new. We simply wanted to successfully launch a consumer-driven health plan. We thought it would be easy, since many employers had already delved into these issues before us.

For many of us who travel by plane, post-9/11 security restrictions have changed the way we prepare. Our packing has changed, our attire has changed and we now enter the airport hoping to make it through the screening, scanning and patting down with our humor intact.

The ink is barely dry on our 2011 calendars, and here in Palm Beach County we're already finding ourselves in the thick of a request for proposal for our self-insured health plan for 2012.

Advisers looking for innovative ways to help their clients attack health care costs now have a new arrow in their quiver: the nascent field of surgery benefit management. SBM combines the use of medical centers of excellence and medical tourism with data mining, predictive modeling, health coaching and case management.

Racial and economic disparities in the U.S. health care system may come down to access to medical care, hints a new report on appendicitis.

The good news for health insurers is that they’re improving their reputation, but they still aren’t receiving high service marks from customers.

The Department of Health and Human Services has launched a Web portal as part of an initiative to make its repositories of health data more accessible.

Americans are more optimistic about their ability to pay for health care services in the coming months, particularly for elective surgeries, according to a survey issued on Thursday.

Casa Grande Regional Medical Center is offering its 3,000 employees and dependents online consultations with emergency physicians to address common, minor medical conditions.

Women are not only saving less for retirement than men, but are also putting fewer dollars into their health savings accounts and health reimbursement arrangements as well, according to the most recent research by the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

The Internal Revenue Service has done a turnaround on the deductibility of breast pumps as medical expenses.