If the first quarter of the year is any indication, the frantic pace of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) among hospitals won’t be slowing down in 2018. Thirty transactions were announced between January 1 and March 31, an 11 percent increase over the same period in 2017, according to Kaufman Hall.

CMS published several of its annual proposed Medicare payment rules on Friday afternoon, covering a slew of facilities like nursing homes, hospices, inpatient rehabilitation and psychiatric hospitals. As predicted, the proposed rule also included regulatory changes in line with CMS initiatives on reducing administrative burden and granting patients easier access to their own data.

In states that choose to utilize federal grants for the pilot program, those who don’t want coverage would have to actively opt out of plans within 60 days.

The older a surgeon gets, the lower the patient mortality rate, with female surgeons in their 50s having the lowest rates overall, according to research led by Yusuke Tsugawa, MD, MPH, PhD, assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

In 1999, Amazon bought a 46 percent stake in Drugstore.com and began marketing its products on the Amazon site. Once hailed as “a likely gold mine,” the venture never turned a profit after running into problems with regulations, logistics and the existing pharmacy benefit managers that already dominated the market.