Description: Discusses creating a user-friendly [and bullet-proof] spreadsheet.

Description: Description and specifications for the health section's article-writing contest on the topic of provider payment reform.

Description: Identifying and submitting all appropriate ICD-9 diagnosis codes to CMS will result in a higher risk score for the member and increased payments to Medicare Advantage plans. Milliman's HCC prevalence study illustrates the significant variations in HCC prevalence rates by age/gender, geography, and population type and will assist plans in benchmarking the effectiveness of their own diagnosis code capture efforts.

Description: The entire issue of Health Watch.

Description: This article is based on a third party administrator study and explores the relationships between family structure, spare capacity and health care utilization.

Description: An actuarial model that provides financial incentives to providers to offer patients an approach that can reverse chronic disease and reduce health care costs

Description: When your goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable Realistic and Time-Based, you’ve got a good foundation for performance improvement.

Description: A summary of a preliminary report from the Committee on Valuation and Related Problems, on guidelines for quantifying balance sheet items in an insurance enterprise.

Description: The Minnesota Cognitive Acuity Screen MCAS is a brief cognitive screen that has been validated to correctly identify mild to moderate cognitive impairment in 98.1 percent of all cases. The MCAS has been in use in the LTCI industry for more than five years, and has shown excellent results in reducing early cognitive claims.

Description: The author explores reasons why blocks of business may become legacy blocks and discusses ways to decrease the likelihood of legacy blocks in the future.