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Health Care "Navigators" To Push New Mandate In Texoma

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HUGO, OK -- Under a new law, every person in the United States will soon be required to have health care coverage.

One method they plan to do that is now underway. Part of this will be accomplished online, but millions are being spent to help enroll people in health plans face to face. We spoke to two agencies now gearing up for a year-long push that starts in just a few weeks.

Several "navigators" are being hired and trained to help Texoma's uninsured sign up for health care.

"Whether you are for Obamacare or not, it's here and it will affect a lot of people," says Little Dixie Community Action Agency executive director Brenda Needham.

The government awarded $67 million, some going to Fort Worth's local United Way and Hugo-based little Dixie.

Splitting their grants up with agencies like Community Council of Greater Dallas, Big Five, and INCA, they plan to have about 140 navigators total covering most of the two states.

"They all receive 20 hours online training and have to be certified by CMS - the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services," says Needham.

"The navigators' responsibility are going to be to educate, inform, and ultimately enroll people who are eligible to be enrolled under the Affordable Care Act," says United Way of Tarrant County president/CEO Tim McKinney.

According to numbers the government provided to Little Dixie, there are more than 600,000 uninsured people under age 65 in all of Oklahoma and nearly five million in Texas. But soon, all that is supposed to change.

"They will have to pay for the insurance, but there are subsidies available. The open enrollment period is October 1 through March 31," says Needham.

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Health Care "Navigators" To Push New Mandate In Texoma

Baylor Health Care System Wins 2013 Tech Titans Award for Successful Needs-Based Customizations to Allscripts EHR

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CHICAGO, Sept. 6, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --Baylor Health Care System has been named a winner of the 2013 Tech Titans Technology Adopter Award for its outstanding achievement in the rapid and successful design and implementation of innovations enabled by Allscripts (MDRX) Open solutions platform.

Baylor developed several custom components for Allscripts Sunrise Clinical Manager. The enhancements were designed to improve the adoption and use of Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) and the use of electronic physician documentation.

"Baylor is honored to receive the Tech Titans Technology Adopter Award," said Joseph Schneider, Chief Medical Information Officer at Baylor Health Care System. "I am especially proud of the Baylor IT team, who worked so hard to develop a solution that improved physician documentation as it improved the safety and efficiency of patient care."

The Tech Titans award is presented by Metroplex Technology Business Council (MTBC). The MTBC, located in Richardson, Tex., is the largest technology trade association in Texas, representing a quarter million employees through 300 member companies. The Tech Titans award recognizes companies and individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the technology industry and to the technology industry in North Texas.

Among Baylor's notable customizations to the Allscripts EHR was a custom physician documentation tool, called NoteBuilder that allows the 3,200 physicians within the Baylor network to create notes quickly and accurately with minimal wasted effort.

"We would like to congratulate Baylor for this special recognition," said Paul M. Black, President and Chief Executive Officer of Allscripts.

About AllscriptsAllscripts(NASDAQ:MDRX) delivers the insights that healthcare providers require to generate world-class outcomes. The company's Electronic Health Record, practice management and other clinical, revenue cycle, connectivity and information solutions create aConnected Community of Health for physicians, hospitals and post-acute organizations. To learn more about Allscripts, please visitwww.allscripts.com, Twitter, YouTube and It Takes A Community: The Allscripts Blog.

2013 Allscripts Healthcare, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Allscripts, the Allscripts logo, and other Allscripts marks are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Allscripts Healthcare, LLC in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Forward-Looking StatementsThis press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Statements regarding future events or developments, our future performance, as well as management's expectations, beliefs, intentions, plans, estimates or projections relating to the future are forward-looking statements with the meaning of these laws. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, some of which are outlined below. As a result, no assurances can be given that any of the events anticipated by the forward-looking statements will transpire or occur, or if any of them do so, what impact they will have on our results of operations or financial condition. Such risks, uncertainties and other factors include, among other things: the possibility that our current initiatives focused on product delivery, client experience, streamlining our cost structure, and financial performance may not be successful, which could result in declining demand for our products and services, including attrition among our existing customer base; the impact of the realignment of our sales and services organization; potential difficulties or delays in achieving platform and product integration and the connection and movement of data among hospitals, physicians, patients and others; the risks that we will not achieve the strategic benefits of the merger with Eclipsys Corporation (Eclipsys) or our acquisition of dbMotion, Ltd. (dbMotion), or that the Allscripts products will not be integrated successfully with the Eclipsys and dbMotion products; competition within the industries in which we operate, including the risk that existing clients will switch to products of competitors; failure to maintain interoperability certification pursuant to the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH), with resulting increases in development and other costs for us and possibly putting us at a competitive disadvantage in the marketplace; the volume and timing of systems sales and installations, the length of sales cycles and the installation process and the possibility that our products will not achieve or sustain market acceptance; the timing, cost and success or failure of new product and service introductions, development and product upgrade releases; any costs or customer losses we may incur relating to the standardization of our small office electronic health record and practice management systems that could adversely affect our results of operations; competitive pressures including product offerings, pricing and promotional activities; our ability to establish and maintain strategic relationships; errors or similar problems in our software products or other product quality issues; the outcome of any legal proceeding that has been or may be instituted against us and others; compliance obligations under new and existing laws, regulations and industry initiatives, including new regulations relating to HIPAA/HITECH, increasing enforcement activity in respect of anti-bribery, fraud and abuse, privacy, and similar laws, and future changes in laws or regulations in the healthcare industry, including possible regulation of our software by theU.S. Food and Drug Administration; the possibility of product-related liabilities; our ability to attract and retain qualified personnel; the continued implementation and ongoing acceptance of the electronic record provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, as well as elements of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka health reform) which pertain to healthcare IT adoption, including uncertainty related to changes in reimbursement methodology and the shift to pay-for-outcomes; maintaining our intellectual property rights and litigation involving intellectual property rights; legislative, regulatory and economic developments; risks related to third-party suppliers and our ability to obtain, use or successfully integrate third-party licensed technology; breach of data security by third parties and unauthorized access to patient health information by third parties resulting in enforcement actions, fines and other litigation. See our Annual Report on Form 10-K/10K-A for 2012 and other public filings with theSECfor a further discussion of these and other risks and uncertainties applicable to our business. The statements herein speak only as of their date and we undertake no duty to update any forward-looking statement whether as a result of new information, future events or changes in expectations.

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Baylor Health Care System Wins 2013 Tech Titans Award for Successful Needs-Based Customizations to Allscripts EHR

Health Care Centre celebrating quarter of a century of service

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Published on September 07, 2013

Some 257 golfers signed up to fundraise for the Burin Peninsula Health Care Fundation's annual golf charity event Saturday at the Grande Meadows Golf Course in Frenchman's Cove. It marked the start of weekend celebrations for the 25th anniversary of the Burin Peninsula Health Care Centre. George Macvicar Photos

Published on September 07, 2013

Spectators turned out not only to golf but to enjoy the Burin Peninsula Health Care Foundation's annual charity golf festivities Saturday at the Grande Meadows Golf Course. It was a beautiful September afternoon.

Published on September 07, 2013

'Black Ice' from St. Lawrence was among the musicial performances who volunteered their time during the charity golf day in Frenchman's Cove.

Published on September 07, 2013

It's a hole in one! Theresa Hodder and her fellow Scotiabank employees in Marystown and Burin hosted a putting contest on the practice green.

The Burin Peninsula Health Care Centre is celebrating its 25th anniversary this weekend Sept. 7-9.

The Health Care Centre officially opened its doors for patient care in September 1988, providing health care services to all the communities on the Burin Peninsula. The health centre officially became a part of Eastern Health in 2005 when the regional health authority was formed.

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Health Care Centre celebrating quarter of a century of service

President Clinton’s Remarks on Health Care Policy and The Affordable Care Act – Video

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President Clinton #39;s Remarks on Health Care Policy and The Affordable Care Act
On Wednesday, September 4, President Clinton delivered remarks from the Clinton Presidential Center on the critical role a high quality, affordable and accessible health care system plays in...

By: clintonfoundationorg

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President Clinton's Remarks on Health Care Policy and The Affordable Care Act - Video

The right’s health care “revolution” is a scam

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The consumer-driven healthcare revolution, trumpeted one conservative think tank a few years back, has only just begun.

Now, for anyone who has ever been inconvenienced by an encounter with the healthcare system or even worse, been on the receiving end of poor quality care, a medical error or a misdiagnosis a greater focus on consumer satisfaction might sound like just the right medicine for American healthcare.

So should we celebrate the recent rise of consumer-driven or consumer-directed healthcare plans? The premise of CDHPs essentially high-deductible plans, with an option for a health savings account is straightforward enough: If you shop for services with your own money, youll use less healthcare and hunt for better bargains, in the process forcing providers to improve quality.

CDHPs have grown rapidly in recent years. From a trivial 4 percent in 2006, CDHPs now account for a full 20 percent of all employer-based insurance plans. The trend seems set to continue in 2014: A survey from the National Business Group on Health last month found that CDHPs were considered the most effective tactic to control rising costs by large employers, with 72 percent already offering a CDHP, and 22 percent planning to offer only CDHPs in 2014.

Id wait to break out the bubbly, for, despite the utopian claims of its enthusiasts, CDHPs are more about cash than quality, more about cost shifting than consumer empowerment.

The consumer-driven healthcare revolution, it turns out, is likely to be neither revolutionary nor consumer-driven, but instead will only manage somehow to make the misfortune of getting sick an even worse experience.

One irony of the current craze with consumer-driven care is that its adherents seem surprisingly unaware that we already had an experiment with true market medicine in this country in the 19th century.

From the beginning, argues the legal professor T. S. Jost in his critique of the consumer-driven movement, Health Care at Risk, there was only consumer-directed health care in the United States. Patients paid out of pocket, there was no health insurance, and there were an impressive variety of equally ineffective practitioners, frequently engaged in brutal competition.

The system (if it can be called that) was basically a disaster, with the presence of a healthcare marketplace doing little to encourage quality in that golden age of quackery. What ultimately did improve quality at least to some extent was good old-fashioned regulation: medical licensure laws, the closure of low-quality medical schools, the Pure Food and Drugs Act, and so on.

Meanwhile, the poor of that era were generally left at the mercy of scattered and frequently inadequate charitable facilities if they were lucky. In later years, hospitals would not infrequently reject or otherwise dump sick patients deemed poor financial investments, a notorious practice that wasnt really addressed again, with regulation until the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1986.

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The right’s health care “revolution” is a scam

A look at health care savings plans

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NEW YORK (AP) -- Health care is an alphabet soup of abbreviations and acronyms, and the ways one can save to pay for medical care are no different. Here's a breakdown of health care savings plans:

HSA:

Health Savings Account. Think of it as a 401(k) for health care. An individual sets aside money, pre-tax, into a special bank account that can be used for medical expenses. Companies often make contributions to the account for their employees. HSAs are portable, meaning they can be taken with the employee when they leave a company. If used correctly, HSAs help lower taxes three ways: the contributions reduce your taxable income, gains from the invested money are tax free, as are withdrawals for eligible medical costs.

HRA:

Health Reimbursement Arrangement. A company sets aside money to pay for an employee's eligible medical expenses. While some plans allow an employee to roll over the balance year to year, an employee cannot contribute to the account and the amount of money is typically not portable. Eligible health care expenses reimbursed by the employer are considered tax free for the employee.

FSA:

Flexible Spending Account. An employee sets aside pre-tax dollars in an employer-sponsored account to pay for health care expenses. The key feature of a FSA is "use it or lose it." An employee must use all money in his or her account during the coverage period (typically a full year) or forfeit any leftover money. FSAs also exist for mass transit costs and child care expenses.

HDHP:

High-deductible health plan. A type of health insurance that has a minimum deductible of $1,200 for individual coverage or $2,400 for family coverage. HDHPs are primarily used to cover catastrophic illnesses and medical emergencies. HSAs can only be used with HDHPs. Another name for HDHP is "Consumer Driven Health Plan" or CDHP.

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A look at health care savings plans

3 Lower-Risk Ways to Invest in Health Care

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Sector exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, allow nervous investors to sample from the fast-paced health care industry with lessened risk. But how do you choose the best health care ETF for your portfolio?

ETFs exist for every aspect of the health care industry including medical devices and insurance companies. But the standouts focus on either a mix of drugmakers and biotechs or an all-biotech buffet.

Here are three sector ETFs to consider.

1. A broad bundleVanguard Health Care ETF (NYSEMKT: VHT) tracks the MSCI US IMI Health Care 25/50. The ETF contained 293 stocks as of the last quarter. Pharmaceuticals accounted for more than 40% of the holdings, with biotech coming in second with 19.4%. That's reflected in the five largest holdings: Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer, Merck, Gilead (NASDAQ: GILD) , and Amgen. Vanguard's ETF is up 27.74%, as of September 5 pre-market.

This ETF has a well-balanced top five. Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer, and Merck are all Dogs of the Dow , and the former two in particular have enough segments to withstand a hit here and there.

Gilead is up more than 100% in the past year. The company stands at the forefront of the much-anticipated all-oral hepatitis C treatments and has historically led the market in HIV drugs. Amgen leads a new class of cholesterol medications that could step in where statins fail.

The ETF has an expense ratio of 0.14% and an average volume of around 170,000. Vanguard offers commission-free trading on its ETFs.

2. Large piece of biotechSPDR S&P Biotech ETF (NYSEMKT: XBI) tracks the S&P Biotechnology Select Industry Index. Holdings include 56 biotech companies with Alnylam, Incyte, and NPS Pharmaceuticals at the top. The ETF is up 42.59% year-to-date.

The ETF's top holdings represent companies still on the brink of breaking out in a big way. Alnylam's potential lays in its RNAi therapeutics and discovery methods, which could revolutionize the biotech industry. The company has a 5x15 program, which hopes to have five drugs in clinical development before 2015. Incyte focuses on cancer and inflammation treatments,and its stockpopped last month following positive mid-stage trials for metastatic pancreatic cancer. NPS had a strong launch for its short-bowel syndrome treatment and should soon submit regulatory paperwork for a hypoparathyroidism treatment.

This biotech spider has a gross expense ratio of 0.35% and an average volume of around 305,000.

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3 Lower-Risk Ways to Invest in Health Care

Health Care REIT to Attend the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2013 Global Real Estate Conference

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TOLEDO, Ohio--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Health Care REIT, Inc. (HCN) announced today that the company will participate in the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2013 Global Real Estate Conference at the Westin Times Square in New York, New York. Corporate materials will be available on the Investor Relations section of Health Care REITs website (www.hcreit.com) on Tuesday, September 10, 2013.

George L. Chapman, Chairman and CEO of Health Care REIT, will participate on a panel at the conference. The panel is scheduled for Wednesday, September 11, 2013 at 1:20 p.m. Eastern Time. The panel discussion will be webcast and may be accessed at http://www.veracast.com/webcasts/baml/realestate2013/id57106137219.cfm. The webcast will be available one hour after the conclusion of the live event and will expire December 10, 2013.

About Health Care REIT, Inc.

Health Care REIT, Inc., an S&P 500 company with headquarters in Toledo, Ohio, is a real estate investment trust that invests across the full spectrum of seniors housing and health care real estate. The company also provides an extensive array of property management and development services. As of June 30, 2013, the companys broadly diversified portfolio consisted of 1,183 properties in 46 states, the United Kingdom, and Canada. More information is available on the companys website at http://www.hcreit.com.

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Health Care REIT to Attend the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2013 Global Real Estate Conference

Health Care REIT Seals Emeritus Deal

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Health Care REIT Inc. (HCN) closed the triple net lease deal with Emeritus Senior Living (ESC) for a portfolio of 38 senior housing communities. The move comes as part of the companys efforts to strengthen its long standing ties with Emeritus and consequently strengthen its portfolio. Properties leased under triple-net leases require the tenants to pay all property-related expenses in addition to rent.

Notably, the properties were previously owned by Health Care REIT in an 80%/20% joint venture (:JV) with Merrill Gardens. Upon completion of the lease deal, Health Care REIT acquired Merrill Gardens 20% interest in the JV for $173 million, which includes pro rata mortgage debt of $74 million.

Health Care REIT made a public disclosure of the deal in June this year. The leased portfolio, consisting about 4,400 units, provides both assisted and independent living as well as memory care services to customers. The assets are positioned across 8 states, and primarily in Washington and California.

As per the agreement terms disclosed earlier, the triple net lease deal carries an initial term of 15 years, with an additional 15-year extension option. With management projecting the deal to be moderately accretive to earnings in the first year, we remain encouraged and view it as a strategic one.

In fact, the deal with Emeritus one of the largest assisted living and memory care services providers in the U.S. reflects Health Care REITs concerted efforts towards increasing its top line through strengthening its ties and providing flexibility to its business model.

Last month, Health Care REIT reported second-quarter 2013 normalized FFO (funds from operations) of 93 cents per share, a cent ahead of the Zacks Consensus Estimate and up 4 cents year over year. The improved results were primarily attributable to better-than-expected revenue growth. Alongside, the company registered decent same-store net operating income.

Health Care REIT currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). REITs that are performing better include CubeSmart (CUBE) and Highwoods Properties Inc. (HIW), both of which carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

Note: FFO, a widely accepted and reported measure of the performance of REITs, is derived by adding depreciation, amortization and other non-cash expenses to net income.

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Health Care REIT Seals Emeritus Deal

Health care is about to get even more complicated

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Health care is about to get even more complicated

By Marty Carpenter, ksl.com Contributor

September 5th, 2013 @ 8:06pm

SALT LAKE CITY Over the past few weeks, I've had the opportunity to discuss the upcoming changes to health care with several experts as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) rolls into full effect. Through those discussions the one thing I have learned is that if you think health care is about to get simpler, you're in for a bit of a shock.

"I don't think health care was ever simple," says Terry Buckner, president and CEO of The Buckner Company, a health insurance broker. "Any time you have a transaction that involves an employee, their employer, their medical provider and a health insurance carrier, it's a complex transaction. Now you add on top of that the IRS to regulate it and some mandates by the federal government as to what your insurance should look like-- it certainly becomes complex."

- Terry Buckner, president and CEO, The Buckner Company

Many of Buckner's clients are still unclear about how the ACA will affect their business or if it has to affect their business at all.

"It absolutely impacts every business," says Buckner. He says large employers have mandates they now have to navigate while small businesses have varying requirements about when they have to provide coverage.

Buckner says navigating health care today without some help is as crazy as a large business trying to do its own taxes. "Right nowmore than everthe expertise is huge."

The wave of change

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Health care is about to get even more complicated

Women Have The Breasts So Their Health Care Should Cost More Than Men – FOX NEWS! – Please Share! – Video

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Women Have The Breasts So Their Health Care Should Cost More Than Men - FOX NEWS! - Please Share!
Women Have The Breasts So Their Health Care Should Cost More Than Men - FOX NEWS! - Please Share!

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Women Have The Breasts So Their Health Care Should Cost More Than Men - FOX NEWS! - Please Share! - Video


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