The Dean Clinic has navigated through tough waters toward a value-based physician compensation model. It is an outlier. More commonly, physician and hospital contracts are top-heavy with volume, not value, a physician recruiter says.

Integrating physicians under one management umbrella can be a huge challenge. It's not the acquiring that's hard. It's the integrating. Lack of a cohesive practice strategy is often the culprit.

A house subcommittee will have another chance next week to amend a draft proposal to kill the sustainable growth rate formula. Without a "doc fix" in place, physicians who treat Medicare patients will face a 24.4% cut in reimbursement rates in 2014.

Some of the biggest cuts are aimed at independent testing laboratories, which see 26% of their fees slashed, followed by radiation therapy centers, which may lose 13% under CMS's "particularly complicated," proposed changes.

Medication adherence is a multifaceted challenge that's getting a shot in the arm from technology developers. Glowing pill bottle caps connected to the Internet and a digital library of pill images with detailed data on drug interactions are just the beginning.

Seven of the nine participants in CMS's pilot program for accountable care organizations are applying to transition to the Medicare Shared Savings Program, while two are abandoning the program completely.

Don’t be sloppy about your flu shots this season, or you might wind up losing money. The new flu vaccine payment allowance, which CMS released this month, won’t help. Compensation on a few flu vaccines is down — the payment allowance on Q2036 (Flulaval IIV3), previously $9.833, is $8.579 as of Aug. 1; 90654 (Fluzone Intradermal IIV3 has gone from $18.981 to $18.918.