Briefly Noted
Briefly Noted
• The National Hospice Organization (Alexandria, VA) has changed its name to the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO). The organization represents nearly 2,500 hospice care programs and thousands of professionals in the United States. NHPCO President Karen Davie said the organization made the decision to change its name because "adding palliative care to our name . . . reflects the natural evolution in end-of-life care and fosters recognition of the role of hospices in providing such care." Hospice care and palliative care share the same core values and philosophies, she added.
• Home healthcare stocks showed a major decline in FY99, according to a recent report from HealthCare Markets Group (Hilton Head, SC). The segment dropped 10.6% in FY99 after a 43.8% decline in FY98. The huge decline in stock prices was also seen among the physician practice management, assisted living, and hospital industries, said HealthCare Markets.
• Market revenue estimates for healthcare Internet companies are continuing to climb extremely high, according to a report from Feedback Research Services (Jacksonville, OR). For example, some analyts forecast that there is a $25 billion Internet healthcare market, with home healthcare potentially accounting for $1 billion of that. The catch is, the company said, that at this point, there is no established means of reimbursement for non-traditional delivery of home care services. In other words, the company asks, who is going to pay for the devices and services? Without any outside sources to pay for services, the only other reason for a healthcare provider to implement electronic delivery of home monitoring, the company said, would be to achieve cost savings in the form of one of the folowing: administrative efficiencies, increased productivity for the home health nurse, or reduced unnecessary use of expensive or scarce medical services, said Feedback Research Services.
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