News Room

Family physicians can tell story after story to illustrate why primary care is the most important part of a well-designed health care system, and thanks to the three-year Health is Primary campaign that Family Medicine for America's Health...
Lawmakers and administration officials abandoned their push for a single-payer health care system over a year ago. Advocates of a publicly funded program haven’t given up on the concept, however, and a new report could re-ignite a debate...
The CMS has formally signed off on California's $6.2 billion Medicaid waiver, along with its decision to renew extra funding that supports the state's public safety net hospitals for just one year instead of five.  The CMS announced its...
With the upcoming Presidential election, health care is once again keeping us up at night. How much of the current debate is hyperbolic rhetoric? What policy changes are realistic in an election year? What market trends in the private...
A California state law that takes effect in the new year aims to help hospital patients better transition home with the aid of informed family members and friends, a move that could improve quality of care, prevent readmissions and cut...
The AAFP has thrown its support behind a new model for delivering preventive oral health care as a component of routine medical care and enhancing partnerships between primary care and dentistry. The model, dubbed the Oral Health Delivery...
CMS is bringing the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) one step closer to its 2019 implementation date by providing the industry with a timeline for the development of quality metrics and other measures that will gauge provider...
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has defined "providers" as physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants.1 To be consistent with this definition, The Joint Commission recently approved several revisions to...
The patient-centered medical home providers a robust framework for the advanced care coordination required to make an accountable care organization successful. Care management is the key to ACO success, but many healthcare organizations...
Community health workers who help patients navigate the health care system and work to address their social and economic needs have rarely been fully integrated into care teams. This issue reports on health care organizations that have...
CMS must do more to improve the accuracy of Medicare physician payments.  That was the urgent message delivered via a Dec. 16 letter(2 page PDF) from AAFP Board Chair Robert Wergin, M.D., of Milford, Neb., to CMS Acting Administrator Andy...
Children in the Medicaid population who receive consistent primary care over the course of more than 2 years in an accountable care organization (ACO) are less likely to require inpatient care than those without continuous involvement in a...
One in five Americans reports no usual source of health care, and the number of Americans reporting that they have a personal relationship with a usual source of care has declined steadily over the past 15 years. Given the positive...
After Carolyn, a patient in her late 60s who suffered from liver and heart failure, depression, and frequent falls, was admitted to the hospital six times in 2011, her daughter sought a way to secure more comprehensive care for her mother...
The growth of multipayer patient centered medical home (PCMH) reform across the country, accelerated by the Affordable Care Act, offers the opportunity to widely transform the primary care delivery system. Recent Health Affairs research ...
Kaiser Permanente and Group Health Cooperative announced today they have signed a definitive agreement for Kaiser Permanente to acquire Seattle-based Group Health. The combination will advance the growth of the integrated model for health...
Getting family physicians ready for a health care delivery system that revolves around value-based payment is a key priority for the AAFP.  It's a priority for many family physicians, too, according to a survey in which one-third of...
The Affordable Care Act expanded health coverage to millions of Americans in 2014. Because more people had insurance to pay for healthcare services, demand and spending predictably went up more quickly.  But the important question for the...
The ideal attributes of the patient-centered medical home (PCMH) need a timely update. The concept appears to have different meaning to patients and consumers, health care providers, and payers/health plans. Likewise, the meaning (and...
After a hospital stay, patients may just want to put the experience behind them. The last thing they want to do is come back. Increasingly, though, they are doing just that—but at the request of the hospital, and in an effort to improve...

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