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Countercyclical Aid Is Not Enough to Fix the Broken US Approach to Public Health Financing

Bill of Health

If the pandemic has taught us anything about public policy, it is that the model of countercyclical federal aid — which expands at the onset of an economic crisis but abates as that crisis is resolved — is fundamentally inadequate when applied to the realm of public health. public health expenditures fell by 30 percent.

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Look Up Your Hospital: Is It Being Penalized By Medicare?

Kaiser Health News

Under programs set up by the Affordable Care Act, the federal government cuts payments to hospitals that have high rates of readmissions and those with the highest numbers of infections and patient injuries. For the readmission penalties , Medicare cuts as much as 3 percent for each patient, although the average is generally much lower.

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Why an ICD Code for Loneliness May be the Key to Address this “Profound Public Health Threat”

Healthcare IT Today

The following is a guest article by Cindy Jordan, Co-Founder and CEO at Pyx Health Last year, US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy identified loneliness as a “ profound public health threat ” that can be just as hazardous to health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. The good news is that we are already partially there.

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Acute hospital care at home gets good grades from CMS research

Healthcare IT News - Telehealth

Patients who received care under the pandemic's Acute Hospital Care at Home program had a low mortality rate and minimal complications related to escalations back to the brick-and-mortar hospital, according to a CMS research letter published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Health Forum.

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Overcoming Challenges in Public Health Policy Implementation

Healthcare Blog

Public health policy encompasses various levels of healthcare, from federal legislation to state or local laws, community-based health initiatives, and facility-level policies. It also encourages good health and helps achieve designated health objectives. What Is Public Health Policy?

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Health Care Paradox: Medicare Penalizes Dozens of Hospitals It Also Gives Five Stars

Kaiser Health News

The federal government has penalized 764 hospitals — including more than three dozen it simultaneously rates as among the best in the country — for having the highest numbers of patient infections and potentially avoidable complications.

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Budget 2024: Private hospitals tapped to provide psychiatric telehealth amid crisis

Healthcare IT News - Telehealth

The Australian mental health system has reached a crisis point where psychiatrists and other mental health professionals are leaving the sector in droves due to burnout and inadequate support, leaving patients to wait for long to receive care or delay their treatment and risk further deterioration.

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