Healthcare plans

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.

The National Committee for Quality Assurance recently issued new standards for its Patient-Centered Medical Home program. More than 7,700 clinicians at 1,500 sites use existing standards from Washington-based NCQA in their medical home initiatives.

If you're a dessert lover like me, you may have celebrated at the news that Mark Haub, a Kansas State University nutrition professor, lost 27 pounds and lowered his cholesterol levels by eating a 10-week diet of mostly Twinkies and Doritos and adding no extra exercise.

Have you ever tried to speak with your teenagers about saving money?

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) treatments are all the rage lately for consumers, and many carriers are catching on to the trend by offering discounts on or coverage of certain benefits.

Though primary care physicians and nurse practitioners are intended to be patients' first point of entry into the health care system, approximately seven out of 10 people in U.S. commercial health plans (and 95% of the elderly) see one or more specialists a year.

Self-funding used to be exclusively for big companies that had a solid cushion of assets, plenty of cash flow and a large employee population across which to spread risk.

Guardian Life will withdraw its medical insurance product line in all states, and will wind down its existing business over the next two years.

The reverberations from last year’s seismic legislative tilts will be keenly felt by insurers in the coming year. A new report by Boston-based Aite Group finds reaction to health care reform and financial services reform among five trends that will shape each sector respectively.

Overall, electronic health records are expected to reduce medical errors, but Dean Sittig has devoted a lot of research to the ways that EHRs themselves can fail.

While the number of health savings accounts and health reimbursement arrangements increased in 2010, average individual account balances fell, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

Dossia, a Cambridge, Mass.-based personal health records vendor targeting large employers, has named Michael Critelli as president and CEO, succeeding Colin Evans.