Adam O'Neal, the Republican mayor of the town of Belhaven, North Carolina (population 1,639), is walking 273 miles from Belhaven to Washington, D.C., to draw attention to the July 1 closing of Vidant Pungo Hospital, the town’s only hospital.

ROCHESTER, MN (July 15th, 2014) - Ambient Clinical Analytics, Inc., the provider of powerful bedside real-time critical decision support tools for ICU, Operating Room and Emergency Departments, was precisely chosen by the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management to be the focus of their case study in the annual Business School Alliance for Health Management competition. The Carlson School earned first place by showcasing the technology from AmbientClinical Analytics.

Community Health Systems subsidiaries have executed a definitive agreement to acquire substantially all of the assets of 179-bed Natchez Regional Medical Center in Natchez, Mississippi, which voluntarily filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy in March 2014.

A new $100 million program at the Department of Health & Human Services aims to accelerate Medicaid reform.

As more conditions are cared for in the community setting rather than in hospitals, the jobs are moving along with the patients. The latest U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report finds hospital hiring largely flat but physician office hiring up 4,000 jobs from the previous month and up 57,200 jobs from June of last year.

The Health IT Policy Committee has endorsed a package of Meaningful Use Stage 3 recommendations governing quality measures that includes an “innovative pathway” giving eligible professionals and hospitals more flexibility in achieving compliance.

A Suffolk Superior Court Judge has put a three-week hold on the deal between Partners HealthCare System and the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office to allow comments from other stakeholders, including competing hospital systems and medical groups.

Finally! That seems to be the most common reaction to the proposed rule from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) that would let providers use the 2011 Edition CEHRT or a combination of 2011 and 2014 Edition CEHRT for the Meaningful Use reporting period in 2014.