Month: May 2012

Physicians Plus lost more than 8,000 members and $10.5 million last year, while Unity gained more than 19,000 members and made $1.3 million, newly released data show. The health insurance companies’ parent organizations — Meriter Health Services, which owns Physicians Plus, and UW Health, which owns Unity — were in heated negotiations last year. (WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL, 5/4)

The state is sending a letter this week to 111,000 BadgerCare Plus enrollees about higher premiums many of them will pay starting July 1, state Department of Health Services Secretary Dennis Smith said Wednesday. Another letter, to be sent next month, will tell affected enrollees how much they will have to pay for the state's largest Medicaid health insurance program, Smith said. (WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL, 5/3)

The state is sending out letters to tens of thousands of low-income Wisconsinites warning them that the cost of their state health coverage will rise - in some cases sharply - on July 1. The letters are being sent after federal officials announced Friday their approval of plans by Gov. Scott Walker's administration to cut costs in those Medicaid programs. Officials estimate that the plans will lead to more than 17,000 people leaving or being turned away from the state's BadgerCare Plus health programs for the needy. (JOURNAL SENTINEL, 5/3)

Five Wisconsin community health centers are receiving $16.1 million in grants from the federal health reform law that will allow them to serve more than 29,000 new patients, the Department of Health and Human Services announced Tuesday. The funding is part of a total $728 million in grants awarded across the country to support renovation and construction projects expected to serve an additional 860,000 patients. (WHN, 5/2)

A Middleton man's $1.3 million gift to Agrace Hospice in Fitchburg will help expand a training program for doctors specializing in hospice and palliative care. (WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL, 5/2)

Wisconsin is at the forefront of IT adoption, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology Dr. Farzad Mostashari told a crowd of health care leaders in Madison last week at an event presented by the Wisconsin Statewide Health Information Network and the Wisconsin Health Information Technology Extension Center. In Wisconsin, more than 60 percent of office-based physicians have adopted a basic electronic health record, according to the CDC. That's well above the national average of 34 percent. (WHN, 5/1)

Fully 3,443 pounds of unneeded prescription medications and over-the counter medicine was collected in four hours Saturday during Medicine Collection Day at Miller Park, a Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District spokesman said Monday. Around 970 people participated in the seventh annual collection by dropping off more than 1-1/2 tons of pills, capsules, ointments, sprays, inhalers, creams and pet medications. (JOURNAL SENTINEL, 5/1)