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Hospitals will be allowed to care for Medicare patients in their own homes during the pandemic under a government program announced Wednesday to help hospitals deal with the latest surge. ...The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said it will let hospitals quickly launch home programs...Hospitals would need to meet certain standards to participate. Those include providing twice-daily visits by medical workers and equipment such as blood pressure and oxygen-level monitors, and keeping patients connected via an iPad or other device to a command center ...

U.S. spending on health insurance grew at an accelerated rate in 2011, breaking a two-year trend of smaller cost increases. The culprit, a new study suggests, is not Americans seeking more treatment but rather rapid growth in the price of medical care. Spending for private health insurance surged by 4.6 percent in 2011, according to a report from the Health Care Cost Institute. That growth rate is faster than the rest of the economy and higher than the previous year, which had 3.8 percent growth. Average spending on a private insurance patient rose to $4,547 in 2011, compared with $4,349...

WASHINGTON (AP) — If you or an elderly relative have been hospitalized recently and noticed extra attention when the time came to be discharged, there's more to it than good customer service. As of Monday, Medicare will start fining hospitals that have too many patients readmitted within 30 days of discharge due to complications. The penalties are part of a broader push under President Barack Obama's health care law to improve quality while also trying to save taxpayers money. About two-thirds of the hospitals serving Medicare patients, or some 2,200 facilities, will be hit with penalties averaging around $125,000 per...

Doctors May Soon Be Forced to Accept Lower Reimbursements for Treating Medicare Patients. A missed deadline by Congress may mean many of the country's 44 million Medicare patients will have a harder time finding a doctor -- piquing the frustration of many physicians who already care for these patients. On Friday, the Senate adjourned for its traditional Memorial Day break without eliminating a physician payment cut for treatments to Medicare patients that took effect today, which means that the country's doctors may soon be paid 21.3 percent less to treat Medicare patients. In a statement issued Friday, Dr. James Rohack,...