Content about Healthcare reform

WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY IT’S IMPORTANT Take Care Health Systems’ announcement that its Take Care Clinics ranked among the top 10% of all organizations globally in engaging their customers, according to Gallup research, is not only important for Take Care but also for the overall convenient care clinic industry.

(THE NEWS: Gallup: Take Care Clinics tops at customer engagement. For the full story, click here) 

WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY IT'S IMPORTANT Emergency room visits have been -- and continue to be -- on the rise, and if the recently passed healthcare reform is not coupled with an aggressive game plan to deliver healthcare services to the newly insured, the ER will continue to be the first place many seek care. One way to ease the pressure on overburdened ERs: Establish more retail-based clinics.

WASHINGTON Despite widespread media coverage on healthcare reform, political debates and legislative initiatives over the past year, many consumers still do not understand how the healthcare system works, according to the 3rd Annual Deloitte Center for Health Solutions Survey of Health Care Consumers.

The survey also found that, despite suffering from chronic conditions and often not participating in a wellness program, many consumers still perceive themselves as healthy -- a problem that will continue to challenge the healthcare system.

WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY IT’S IMPORTANT Patient-centric healthcare solutions offer a glimpse of what health reform eventually could look like by the time it is fully implemented. It’ll be a system where consumers are more in control of managing the levers that determine cost.

(THE NEWS: PricewaterhouseCoopers: Government, health leaders seek customer-centric healthcare solutions. For the full story, click here)

WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY IT'S IMPORTANT Simply put, if you take a significant number of retail pharmacies out of the Medicaid equation, it won’t be too long before overall healthcare expenditures begin skyrocketing.

(THE NEWS: Representing NACDS, Civello asks Obama to maintain emergency Medicaid funding. For the full story, click here)

NEW YORK After months of hard-edged wrangling in Congress, on the Sunday morning political gab fests, on talk radio, in angry town-hall meetings and in dueling blogs online, the fate of President Obama’s top domestic priority – namely, the overhaul of the nation’s fractured healthcare system and the expansion of health coverage to the uninsured – appeared increasingly threatened. A growing chorus of Beltway insiders and pundits on the left and right were all but declaring health-reform legislation dead in the water for 2009.

NEW YORK CVS Caremark’s 2009 “Health IQ” study is yet another indicator coming from the private sector that health reform cannot wait.

The findings come on the heels of another sign: PhRMA’s resurrection of the Harry and Louise characters, the middle class couple who helped to defeat the Clinton healthcare reform proposal, in a new multi-million dollar ad campaign developed in collaboration with Families USA, the national organization for healthcare consumers. This time, however, Harry and Louise are in support of healthcare reform.

NEW YORK After decades of fruitless efforts, activist lawmakers in a Democratically controlled Congress finally may be on the verge of pushing through one of the most elusive policy goals of the past half-century: a massive reform of the U.S. healthcare system that aims to extend health coverage to most Americans and put a clamp on federal healthcare spending.