The market just keeps getting more competitive
for U.S. health plans that cover Medicare
Advantage (MA) patients. Most recently, the
February 21 Advance Notice from the Centers for
Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) implied a proposed reimbursement cut for MA patients of approximately 4 to 5 percent. That follows a 2014 reduction of
about 4 percent.
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Wellness is a massive $3.4 trillion global sector... This new site, with transparent access to the same databases doctors use, is a much-needed, ‘spin-free’ wellness research zone.
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Although the IBM-Apple partnership for enterprise mobility has yet to make a healthcare-focused app public, one is coming up in the first quarter of 2015, and the two companies are still planning to make healthcare a focus of their sales pitch, according to a job posting that went up recently, first spotted by 9to5Mac.
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Aon Hewitt, the global talent, retirement and health solutions business of Aon plc (NYSE: AON), today announced that employers and individuals participating in the Aon Active Health Exchange are seeing notable reductions in health care spend for the third straight year.
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A potent audio brand strengthens brand recognition, conveys values, and reaches customers on an emotional level. This adds clarity in highly-regulated industries, where it can be difficult to make specific claims.
A custom-tailored audio brand transforms internal and external touchpoints into meaningful brand experiences. It creates unity among sales presentations, hot-line hold music, booths, events, CRM, videos, training material, TV and mobile.
Ultimately this "surround sound" creates a memorable bond with the brand.
Sixieme Son is an audio branding agency exclusively dedicated to sound identity, audio branding architecture and environmental sound design. Founded in 1995, it is the pioneer of audio branding and is currently Europe's leading agency in the business. To date, over 300 brands from all over the world have relied on the agency’s expertise and experience to design their audio identities.
One of the difficulties of managing a brand’s content (and overall) strategy is making sure that, despite the various messages and methods used, all efforts consistently reflect well on the brand - providing an opportunity to create coherence and meaning in a distinctive way.
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Growth in Medicare spending has slowed substantially, driven primarily by lower spending on hospital care and prescription drugs, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Initiatives such as accountable care organizations and bundled care models that encourage better quality at lower costs are also generating savings for the Medicare program. Health plans are stepping up their focus on accountable care, and Medicare Advantage plans have made gains on chronic disease care and lower readmissions, according to an America's Health Insurance Plans spokeswoman.
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Medicare Advantage plans — private plans that serve as alternatives to the traditional, public program for those that qualify for it — underperform traditional Medicare in one respect: They cost 6 percent more.
But they outperform traditional Medicare in another way: They offer higher quality. That’s according to research summarized recently by the Harvard health economists Joseph Newhouse and Thomas McGuire, and it raises a difficult question: Is the extra quality worth the extra cost?
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