Fairview Health Service and HealthEast Care System have announced their intention to merge, creating what is likely the largest health system in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area with a combined $5 billion in annual revenue.

Through four warehouses in Maine, the nonprofit group Partners for World Health collects unused medical equipment and supplies from U.S. hospitals and ship them to hospitals across the world. 

Lowering rates of readmission, especially in older patients, allows patients to recover fully while minimizing provider spending. A recent study published in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) examined factors attributing to the rise of readmission rates after leaving post-acute care facilities.

Measuring patient engagement allows providers identify which variables lead to patients divesting from their own care. CDW, the technology and business services giant, recently released its 2017 Patient Engagement Perspectives, a study outlining the highs and lows of patient engagement in the past year. 

A merger between two Illinois hospital systems, Advocate Health Care and NorthShore University Health Care, has been called off after a federal judge granted the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) a preliminary injunction against the deal.

Primary care physicians who support the goals of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA)'s changes to reimbursement have some concerns about how its quality reporting will affect their bottom lines and how they care for patients—particularly if the patients aren’t listening.

Increasing use of high-deductible health plans by insurers is creating financial fallout for hospitals, which are reporting record levels of debt attributed to insured patients who can’t afford to pay bills after a hospital visit or surgery.

While a large chunk of healthcare spending may be concentrated among a small population of high-cost patients, focusing on those patients in order to cut down on wasteful spending may not work.