CR2, LLC announced the acquisition of CardioReady, a pioneer in Cardiac Emergency Response and Automated External Defibrillator (AED)
Haemonetics Corporation is to acquire the business assets of the blood collection, filtration and processing product lines of Pall Corporation
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has announced several Affordable Care Act initiatives aimed at keeping more chronically ill patients at home for care.
Executives began to worry about EHR’s independence when the firm was acquired in 2010 by UnitedHealth Group
Millions of consumers and small businesses will receive an estimated $1.3 billion in rebates from their health plans this summer
Researchers found an astonishing 37 errors for every 100 paper prescriptions, versus around 7 per 100 for those who used e-prescribing software.
Big Data, Big Biology, and the ‘Tipping Point’ in Quantified Health: Takeaways from Xconomy’s On-the-Record Dinner
The ACA includes funds to pay special bonuses to Medicare Advantage plans offering above-average quality of care. Instead, the Obama Administration is paying the bonuses to nearly all Advantage plans, including a majority that are rated just average.
Allscripts Plunges After Chairman, Three Directors Leave
Despite those blockbuster deals, the dollar value of M&A activity in the first quarter of this year dropped by 47% to $28.9 billion while the total number of deals increased by 9% to 274.
Fueled in part by fewer complications, robotic-assisted radical prostatectomy (RARP) has surpassed open surgery as the predominant surgical approach to localized prostate cancer, analysis of a national database showed.
A California representative is calling for an investigation into Accretive Health, one of the nation’s largest collectors of medical debt, for potentially violating a federal law
Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson is suing Chicago- based Accretive for violations of U.S. and state patient-privacy and debt-collection laws.
Over the past few years community engagement positions have been popping up at some of the country’s more forward-looking healthcare institutions.
Every year, a vitally important issue gets lost in the din: disability insurance payments, which account for almost $1 out of every $5 spent by Social Security, are growing out of control.
$182,000 to Remove an Appendix. The prices ranged from $1,529 to $182,955 with the median hospital charge of $33,611, the study showed.
Acute care hospitals will receive a 2.3% increase in operating payment for Medicare patients if they participate in hospital inpatient quality reporting programs under the latest proposed rules from CMS.
Non-profit hospitals will struggle with higher costs if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns a key part of the healthcare reform law that requires individuals to buy insurance, Moody’s Investors Service said
A growing number of patient-advocacy groups are playing matchmaker, linking patients to researchers who need them for clinical trials.
If Supreme Court rejects Obama’s health law, employers, insurers will drive their own overhaul
A growing number of health experts are warning of potential collateral damage if the Supreme Court strikes down the entire 2010 Affordable Care Act: potential chaos in the Medicare program.
ResCare, Inc. the largest private, non-franchise home care company in the country, announced today that it has selected MedApps, Inc. as its remote patient biometric monitoring partner.
G.A.O. Calls Test Project by Medicare Costly Waste
Cancer Screenings Stoke the Overdiagnosis Debate
CareFusion to Sell Neurodiagnostic Business to Natus Medical for $58 Million
Thomson Reuters Announces Definitive Agreement to Sell its Healthcare Business to Veritas Capital for $1.25 Billion
According to the CDC, individuals 65 years and older typically make up nearly 25 percent of adult emergency room visits. The creation of the geriatric centered emergency department represents a shift towards catering to the health needs of the growing aging population.
An aging population and an economy that has been slow to rebound are straining the long-term finances of Social Security and Medicare. Those problems are getting new attention Monday as the trustees who oversee the massive programs release their annual financial reports.
States Consider Limiting Patient Costs For Physical, Speech, Occupational Therapy
Democrats expressing buyers’ remorse on Obama’s healthcare law
Regulators are proposing that food companies that want to use tiny engineered particles in their packaging will have to provide extra testing data to show the products are safe.
Leaders Weigh in on Defensive Medicine
A study released on Thursday shows that one in four working-age Americans went without insurance at some point in 2011, often as a result of unemployment and other job changes.
SeraCare Shareholders Approve Acquisition by Linden Capital Partners
Doctors Group Tells Patients To Go For Cheaper, High-Value Treatments
Consumer-directed U.S. health insurance surges
Technology Enables Collaborative Doctor-Patient Relationships
Federal regulators are turning up the heat to reduce the alarming quantity of dangerous, costly, and unnecessary anti-psychotic drugs prescribed to senior
A quarter of working-age adults had a gap in their health-insurance coverage last year, mainly because they lost or changed their jobs, a new think-tank study says.
A controversial idea being promoted by a team of health care experts is to impose a tax on every doctor visit, surgical procedure and prescription.
o-founder and CEO of personal-genetics company 23andMe, Anne Wojcicki, came to Harvard, preaching the virtues of crowd-sourced science and DNA sequencing.
Having professional translators in the emergency room for non-English-speaking patients might help limit potentially dangerous miscommunication, a new study suggests.
SXC Health Solutions Corp. agreed to buy Catalyst Health Solutions Inc. in a cash and stock transaction valued at $4.4 billion to stay competitive as larger pharmacy benefits managers join forces
Video: KHN’s Jordan Rau and Mary Agnes Carey discuss Medicare’s transition to compensating doctors based on the quality of the medical care they provide.
The Obama administration said Wednesday that it would vastly expand the use of competitive bidding to buy medical equipment for Medicare beneficiaries
Express Scripts aims to help patients stay on their meds with a product that predicts who will stop taking prescriptions before the person actually does it.
Numbers, Numbers and More Numbers: Health-care players are finding that crunching the numbers can pay off in both better care and lower costs
To alleviate some of the pressure ahead of the law’s Medicaid health coverage expansion, House Democrats included in their version of the bill a provision requiring states to pay primary care physicians no less than 100 percent of Medicare payment rates.
Consumer advocates, physician groups and several Democratic lawmakers are fighting a quiet battle over a key benefit in the health-care law: tax credits to help millions of people purchase insurance.
Twenty-thousand physicians received emails with links to reports from Medicare showing the amount their patients cost on average as well as the quality of the care they provided.
Markets cannot work when consumers and patients have almost no information about the prices they pay for health care.
People are more likely to manage their condition properly when they have more accessible, personal goals, like being able to do more at work or keep up with their kids, instead of focusing only on comparatively abstract targets like blood-sugar levels.
EHealth Inc. and an array of online insurance brokers are eying a possible $4 billion-a-year market, after the Obama administration’s surprise decision to let them sell government-subsidized coverage under the health overhaul.
Hospitals and other healthcare facilities looking to hire more doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals may want to add Facebook, LinkedIn, and even Twitter to their recruitment efforts.
At least 20 states, from Maine to Hawaii, have introduced bills that would limit out-of-pocket payments by consumers for expensive drugs used to treat diseases like cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and inherited disorders.
Accountable Healthcare Holdings Corp., a Boca Raton, Fla-based healthcare staffing provider, completed the acquisition of Med-Staff Oklahoma, a Tulsa, Oklahoma-based firm that focuses on travel nurse staffing.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sought to cast the two-year-old reform law as a vital weapon against racial disparities
How iPads Improve the Patient Experience
Planned Parenthood sues Texas over exclusion
McKesson Wins $31.6 Billion Veterans Agency Drug Contract
Using the term “phenomenal” at least three times to describe the health industry’s response, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services executive on Tuesday named 27 accountable care organizations to begin the Medicare Shared Savings Program April 1
The average American spends twice as much time before buying a TV as they do looking for a doctor
Nearly 60% of physicians ages 40 and younger don’t hold out much hope for American healthcare
Lumeris, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Essence Group Holdings, has teamed up with three Blue Cross and Blue Shield health plans (Highmark, Horizon and Independence) to acquire NaviNet
The report calls for doubling federal spending on public health. Americans spent $8,086 per person in medical care in 2009 versus $251 in public health spending.
Medicine spending climbs to $320 billion, even as usage declines
The very instruments that diagnose and treat us can often make us feel more like test subjects than patients receiving care.
Hospital and physician groups are stepping up their efforts to control spending with a special emphasis on limiting labor costs.
It may sound counterintuitive, but a panel of experts from the Institute of Medicine has concluded that the best way to slow the nation’s breakneck spending on medical care is to impose a tax on every health care transaction.
BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) a leading global medical technology company, announced today that it has signed a definitive agreement to sell its BD Biosciences – Discovery Labware unit, excluding its Advanced Bioprocessing platform, to Corning Incorporated
For the Elderly, Emergency Rooms of Their Own
Genstar Capital, a middle-market private equity firm, is paying $8.00 per share in cash to buy eResearchTechnology Inc., a provider of health outcomes research services to biopharmaceutical sponsors and contract research organizations
Medicaid Insurers Plunge as Ohio Dumps Old Business for New
With Cancer Care, The U.S. Spends More, But Gets More
Two studies show that the individual mandate and penalties for noncompliance would directly affect only a small number of Americans
HHS released a proposed rule Monday announcing a one-year delay of the implementation of ICD-10-CM/PCS. If finalized, ICD-10 would become effective October 1, 2014.
As insurers try to get members to take better care of themselves, they are turning to tactics from the world of digital gaming.
In many doctor’s offices these days, the standard television offerings like daytime talk shows are giving way to a more focused kind of programming: health content.
NQF Identifies Efficient Care for 4 Conditions
The Obama administration is quietly diverting roughly $500 million to the IRS to help implement the president’s healthcare law.
inVentiv Health Completes Acquisition of Kforce Clinical Research
GE to Buy Personlized-Medicine Company
Doctors Detail High Costs of Fighting Malpractice Claims
Drug Spending Levels Off, But Not For The Usual Reasons
SHPS, Inc. Completes Sale of Its Human Resource Solutions Subsidiary to ADP
The PHO, or at least something like it, is making a comeback as payers and the government make slow progress toward accountable care.
Covidien Plc, an Irish health-care products company, agreed to buy Oridion Systems Ltd. (ORIDN), an Israeli maker of devices for patient breathing safety, for $346 million.
Nine specialty groups have listed tests and treatments that are frequently overused, such as CT scans for low back pain and antibiotics for sinus attacks, as part of a project organized by the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) and promoted by Consumer Reports.
If the high court rules the individual mandate is unconstitutional, it’s highly unlikely they would expand that ruling to include Medicaid’s expansion.
In a move likely to alter treatment standards in hospitals and doctors’ offices nationwide, a group of nine medical specialty boards plans to recommend on Wednesday that doctors perform 45 common tests and procedures less often
President Barack Obama, saying he’s confident the U.S. Supreme Court will uphold the 2010 health- care law, said the “burden is on those who would overturn” a law that requires Americans to have insurance
How Healthy Is Your County? A New Data Trove Can Tell You
Troubled Firm Wins Health Exchange Bid
The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services backtracked on a plan that would have required nursing homes to hire independent pharmacists to assess residents’ prescriptions.
Republican lawmakers who have spent two years railing against President Obama’s health care law are beginning to devise alternatives so they can be ready if the Supreme Court forces the issue
Culture change? Medical groups identify 45 tests and treatments doctors should avoid ordering
FDA To Fund Controversial Research Foundation
Sense of Peril for Health Law Gives Insurers Pause
Families hoping to use Medicaid to help pay for long-term care are facing tougher restrictions—though some states are getting stricter than others.
More employees are being asked to roll up their sleeves for medical tests — and to exercise, participate in disease management programs and quit smoking to qualify for hundreds, even thousands of dollars’ worth of premium or deductible discounts.
Don Berwick on the Fate of ‘Obamacare’
After six years, the 252 hospitals that participated in Premier Inc.’s large pay-for performance program, on which Medicare’s current value-based purchasing rules are based, did not have lower 30-day mortality rates compared with 3,363 non-participating hospitals
Vita Advisors, LLC is a research-based strategic advisory firm serving the health care industry.
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