The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT have released additional draft quality measures under their Children’s Measures project.

The many regulatory, reimbursement and policy changes related to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act are undoubtedly changing the business climate for physicians. In a feature with video, the New York Times contrasts the practices of two Kentucky primary care doctors — Sven Jonsson, M.D., and Tracy Ragland, M.D. — to illustrate the economic pressure pushing many sole practitioners into employment by large health care networks.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has published the tenth edition of its Healthcare Horizon Scanning System, an update that includes 35 new technologies and identifies 487 innovations that are being tracked for their potential impact on clinical care, healthcare systems, patient outcomes and costs.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT announced new features on its Health IT Dashboard including a comprehensive literature review on the impacts of health IT on outcomes and a related interactive site.

Do nothing and save billions? It seems to good to be true, but a new report by health care economics consulting firm Dobson|DaVanzo finds that simply by staying the course on current structural changes driving down spending, the Medicare program could save an additional $900 billion over the next 10 years.

For any provider who has been frustrated by consistent problems with their local Medicare Administrative Contractor (MAC), Robert A. Vito, regional inspector general for evaluation and inspections for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General (HHS OIG) shed some light on how underperforming MACs are able to keep their government contracts.

The popularity of “profit sharing” arrangements that reward physician groups for keeping costs down and quality up added to interest in the a Florida Stark law case that was partially settled this week.

ORLANDO—Starting Oct. 1, acute care hospitals with the highest number of acquired infections will see their Medicare payments reduced by 1 percent. With this reality looming, leaders at Chicago-based Northwestern Memorial Hospital shared their efforts to harness data analytics and workflow tools to more accurately identify and report on safety and quality incidents at the Health Information and Management Systems Society annual conference.