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Health Care
The United States has the world's best health care but a wasteful and inefficient system for delivering that care. Five consecutive years of double-digit premium increases have hit the business community hard, especially small firms. An estimated 45 million Americans lack health insurance.
April 16, 2008 is National Healthcare Decisions Day
This national effort follows the success of Virginia's Advance Directives Day initiative in which Virginia focused education and awareness on advance directives and end-of-life planning – and all hospitals participated. The goal is to have every hospital, community center, nursing home, newspaper, church, and others nationwide help the public better understand advance directives and health care decisions so we can demystify the topic and improve the numbers of people with advance directives. This includes hospital staff members, who we hope will "lead by example" and make sure their own health care wishes are known. For more information on National Health Care Decisions Day, click here.
CMS Implements Five-Year EHR Demonstration Project
At the direction of HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is implementing a five-year demonstration project that will encourage small to medium-sized primary care physician practices to use electronic health records (EHR) to improve the quality of patient care. The goal is to revolutionize the way health care information is managed, producing better health outcomes and greater patient satisfaction. This project is a major step toward the President's goal of most Americans having access to a secure, interoperable EHR by 2014. For more information on the project, click here.
Chamber Helps to Form New National Coalition on Benefits The Chamber is co-chairing advocacy efforts for the National Coalition on Benefits (NCB), a coalition dedicated to working with Congress to maintain employers' ability to provide uniform health and retirement benefits to employees and retirees across state and local lines and to ensure that federal health reform initiatives preserve Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) benefits...Please click "here" for more information on the Coalition.
IRS Proposes Accelerated HSA Contributions
Regulations proposed Thursday by the Internal Revenue Service would allow employers that contribute to employees' health savings accounts to accelerate contributions for employees whose medical care expenses are greater than what the employer has so far contributed to the HSA during the year... full story
Chamber Publication Highlights Leading Practices for Emplyee Health Management
On May 22, 2007, the Chamber, in collaboration with Partnership for Prevention, released a report showing how employers can reduce overall health care costs by incorporating employee health prevention and wellness programs into their business.
To view the publication, please click here. To view the Chamber's press release, please see the Resources section to the right.
Chamber Hosts "Leading by Example" Forum
On January 16, 2007, the Chamber hosted Secretary Leavitt for a keynote speech on the 4 cornerstones of transparency. At the event, several member companies signed-on to support these principles, including Tom Donohue for the U.S. Chamber.
To access the New Value -Driven Health Care Purchaser's Guide, click below:
http://www.leapfroggroup.org/news/leapfrog_news/Purchaser_Guide
Value Purchasers Guide
In February, the newly formed Partnership for Value-driven Health Care, a consortium of influential U.S. business groups, announced the release of "The Purchaser Guide to Value-driven Health Care." The Purchaser Guide contains actionable information that will help organizations meet U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) Secretary Michael Leavitt's call for employers to implement "four cornerstones of value-driven health care."
Senate Compromise Reached on Mental Health Parity
On February 14, 2007 the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee reported to the full Senate S. 558, the "Mental Health Parity Act of 2007."
"Put It In Writing – Your life on your terms"
The Chamber has endorsed the American Hospital Association's "Put it in Writing" campaign, which encourages all Americans to discuss end of life options with loved ones and sign an advance medical directive. The Chamber will encourage local chambers and businesses to support the effort through web links, articles, and other information. The website, http://www.putitinwriting.org/, has a host of information and resources to help people in all 50 states prepare an advance directive and provides advice for communicating wishes to family and close friends. Have you signed an advance directive and shared that information with your family? If so, great…if not, we would encourage you to do so now.
"Partnership for Prevention - Shaping Policies, Improving Lives"
AHA and the Chamber have signed on in support of the Partnership for Prevention's "Leading by Example" initiative and will be encouraging our members to participate in this proven program to lower costs and improve the health of their workforce. The initiative is designed to leverage the workplace to improve health by promoting greater business involvement in health promotion and disease prevention. At the core of the initiative are enlightened CEOs who play a pivotal role in advancing worksite health promotion both through their influence on corporate culture and visible support for such programs. These CEOs "lead by example" in that they make health promotion and disease prevention a part of their business strategy to achieve success through optimum employee performance and management of health care costs. Profiles of successful "Leading by Example" initiatives are described at http://www.prevent.org/.
"Patient Friendly Billing Project"
The Chamber has also joined the Healthcare Administrative Simplification Coalition. In addition to AHA, the Coalition represents a broad range of stakeholders, including physicians, health plans and employers. The objective is straightforward: Identify strategies that reduce the costs of administrative complexity in our healthcare system. Initiatives already underway include a "Patient-Friendly Billing" effort that is designed to help health care leaders create a friendlier, patient-focused healthcare billing and collections process. The program is led by the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) in partnership with the American Hospital Association, other associations, leading healthcare providers, and professional service and technology firms. The project and its sponsors are providing leadership to the health care field on this issue through the dissemination of a series of seminal reports and critical resources, such as case studies, tools, and educational events. More information can be found at: http://www.patientfriendlybilling.org/.
"Hospital Compare"
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has joined the Hospital Quality Alliance (HQA), a public-private collaboration to improve the quality of care provided by the nation's hospitals by measuring and publicly reporting on that care. Through the "Hospital Compare" website, participating hospitals voluntarily report quality information based on the measures defined and set by HQA. In an effort to make useful hospital quality of care information available to consumers, the Chamber continues to work with the Hospital Quality Alliance to expand the types of quality measures and information available. This quality information not only helps individual consumers make informed decisions when choosing a hospital, but also encourages health care providers to continue to improve the quality of the care they provide. Please visit http://www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov/.
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