Federal government releases Medicare information to insurance, consumer and employer groups

The federal government has made an ambitious change to its Medicare health care program this week. Now, Medicare information will be at the disposal of employers, insurance companies and consumer advocacy groups. This information will allow these groups to issue reports on local health care professionals and hospitals. In this way, groups can rate health care providers based upon their performance within the Medicare system. Patient information will remain confidential. The decision was made based upon the variances in performance amongst doctors nationwide. Without an adequate method of rating these…

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IBM supercomputer to recommend action on thousands of insurance claims for WellPoint Inc

IBM’s famed supercomputer, Watson, is taking on a new challenge, the results of which may have a sweeping impact on the nation’s insurance industry. The supercomputer has successfully overcome several challenges in the past, including a “Jeopardy!” competition in which the computer won a decisive victory against some of the brightest minds in trivia knowledge. Watson has shown that its computing power surpasses the capabilities of a human mind and, because it is a machine, is not prone to typical human error. For this reason, the computer is now being…

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