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Industry Updates

This broad category includes articles concerning health insurance costs, carrier and health plan news, changing benefits technology, and surveys by the Kaiser Family Foundation and others on employee benefits.

Recruiting Qualified Employees Tops List Of Challenges Facing Small Businesses

“Finding qualified employees remains the overwhelming challenge facing all small business clients but has lessened from September,” according to the latest small business outlook report from the ADP Research Institute.

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Hospitals Face Rough Waters From High Costs

The patients are back — but health systems are facing post-pandemic cost pressures driven by inflation and workforce shortages.

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Kaiser Permanente To Acquire Geisinger Health In Bid To Launch Multisystem VBC Platform

Kaiser Permanente is acquiring 10-hospital Geisinger Health in a deal described as the first step toward a new multisystem value-based care organization, according to a Wednesday announcement.

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ChatGPT Might Show More Empathy Than Docs, Study Finds

OpenAI’s ChatGPT tool can answer patient questions with more empathy than human physicians can, according to a new study. Why it matters: Apparently, even our humanity can be bested by robots. Details: In the study — published Friday by the research journal JAMA Internal Medicine — researchers led by the University of California San Diego, La Jolla took a randomly drawn sample ...

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CDC Relaxes COVID Restrictions For International Travelers

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is relaxing COVID-19 restrictions on international travelers as the national public health emergency is set to expire next month. The CDC said in an update on its website posted Thursday that it will consider anyone who has received a single dose of a Pfizer or Moderna vaccine on or ...

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CVS Closes $10.6B Acquisition Of Oak Street Health To Expand Primary Care Footprint

CVS Health has sealed the deal on its acquisition of Oak Street Health, picking up about 169 medical centers in 21 states. The acquisition will broaden CVS Health’s value-based primary care platform and significantly benefit patients’ long-term health by improving outcomes and reducing costs – particularly for those in underserved communities, according to the company ...

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Feds Wrote $128M In Duplicate Checks To Docs, Report Finds

The federal government wrote duplicate checks to doctors who provided care for veterans, costing taxpayers as much as $128 million in extra payments, according to a new watchdog report out this week. In nearly 300,000 cases, private doctors were paid twice — once by the Veterans Health Administration and another time by Medicare — for the same ...

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Most Seniors In America Can’t Afford Nursing Homes Or Assisted Living, Study Finds

As many as 80% of aging adults in America lack the financial resources to pay for two years of nursing home care or four years of an assisted living community. That’s according to a new study from the National Council on Aging (NCOA) and the LeadingAge LTSS Center at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Additionally, 60% of ...

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Consumers More Satisfied With Traditional Plans Than High-Deductible Plans, Research Finds

Consumers with high-deductible health plans are not as satisfied with their coverage as those with traditional plans. Two-thirds of traditional plan enrollees were extremely or very satisfied with their overall health plan, compared with just more than half of HDHP enrollees, the EBRI/Greenwald Research Consumer Engagement in Health Care Survey found.

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Health Spending Rebounded In 2021 After Pandemic-Driven Declines: HCCI

Healthcare spending declined dramatically in 2020 thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, but expenditures rebounded the following year, according to new data from the Health Care Cost Institute.

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