"Health & Medical News"

Washington — Medicare’s first run at incorporating chronic care management techniques into the program is closing at the end of this year, with most observers already describing the effort as a false start.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services launched the Medicare Health Support pilot project three years ago with high hopes. By hiring eight private disease management firms to set up voluntary chronic care improvement programs for beneficiaries, CMS aimed to improve health care quality while lowering costs. At one point more than 150,000 seniors were enrolled in the programs.

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Stress can really be detrimental to one’s health, and so if you are trying to decide on a New Year’s resolution, then one you should definitely consider is to learn how to manage stress better. Managing stress makes the #5 in our Healthier New Year Resolution series.

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Washington — A war of words escalated earlier this month when a group of pharmacy benefit managers increased the pressure on Congress to pass what the American Medical Association warned would be a costly Medicare electronic prescribing requirement for physicians.

The Pharmaceutical Care Management Assn. since the summer has been pushing lawmakers to include an e-prescribing mandate in any legislation to prevent next year’s 10.1% Medicare physician pay cut. Now the PCMA has launched a tough television and print advertising campaign.

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