CMS had requested comments on allowing direct provider contracting (DPC) with Medicare beneficiaries in the form of the alternative payment model. Among major healthcare groups, the response was decidedly mixed, ranging from cautious optimism to telling CMS to focus on other payment reforms.

Hospitals will be expected to perform fewer unnecessary C-sections, cut down on imaging procedures for lower back pain and prescribe fewer opioids. If they don’t do so by the end of 2019, Covered California will try to get participating health insurers to exclude those hospitals from their networks.

According to the Boston Globe, plaintiff Stephen Zappala, MD, said the pressure went as far as Steward representatives calling his patients and telling them their operations had to be performed at Steward-owned facilities even if Zappala had referred them elsewhere.

In a systemwide change, Brian Dean, MPH, MBA, will become the new CFO for Memorial Hermann.

Doctor On Demand, a national healthcare service delivered through telehealth technology, has passed one million video visits.

Calling 2017’s failed efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act “one of the greatest disappointments to conservative and libertarian activists in history,” conservative groups pushed for another attempt at getting rid of the law with a series of principles they want to see enacted in place of the ACA.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has selected SnapMD as its provider of telehealth technology.

A survey conducted by cybersecurity provider Imperva has found that more than one in three healthcare organizations have experienced a cyberattack within the last year, while one in 10 have paid a ransom.

The deal will still need to be approved by federal and state regulators, but after delays in contract talks and an unsolicited bid from Brown University, the agreement advances Partners HealthCare’s aim of expanding beyond Massachusetts and matching the increased scale of other Boston-based health systems.

The Congressional Budget Office has scaled back its projections of coverage losses from the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate being repealed, estimating 8.5 million people will be uninsured in 2027 due to the penalty being eliminated by Republicans’ tax legislation beginning next year.