Prices across the healthcare sector rose 2.2 percent year-over-year in March 2018, the highest annual growth rate recorded by Altarum since January 2012, with the report warning rapid price growth is likely to continue.

The Rush hospital system based in Chicago has ended plans to acquire Little Company of Mary of Evergreen Park, Illinois, which would’ve merged 12 facilities with Rush University Medical Center and its 2,500-student health sciences college.

Johnny Delashaw, MD, the former chief of the Swedish Neuroscience Institute (SNI), is suing the Seattle Times over what he alleges was a “false and defamatory” investigative article that damaged his reputation and led to his resignation and the suspension of his medical license.

The report from the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI) examined claims for people with multiple sclerosis (MS) from 2009 to 2015 covered by individual market, employer-sponsored or Medicare Advantage plans. It found total spending per MS patient rose from around $23,900 to $39,628 by 2015. During the same time period, the share of spending spent towards injectable and oral disease modifying therapies (DMTs) rose from 39 percent to 53 percent.

The underlying causes haven’t changed behind the shortage of doctors in the United States: The population aged 65 and over is expected to grow by 50 percent by 2030, increasing demand for healthcare services. The physician population is also aging, with 13.5 percent of the active workforce already aged 65 and over and another 27.2 percent between the ages of 55 and 64.

Verizon’s 2018 Data Breach Investigations Report mirrored what was released last month in its report on breaches involving protected health information (PHI) in prior years. Whereas all other industries profiled—including education, financial and retail—saw the majority of their breaches come from external forces, most of the healthcare industry’s threats came from inside.

The U.S. Coast Guard has announced it will join the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) $4.3 billion rollout of a Cerner electronic health record (EHR) system, giving the health IT giant yet another major customer within the federal government.