Surgical residents who are allowed to work longer hours than currently allowed so that they can stay with or stabilize patients do not show any signs of putting their patients at risk, according to a recent study published by the New England Journal of Medicine. 

The California Department of Public Health fined the Community Regional Medical Center $86,625 after a hospital employee left a towel inside a patient following abdominal surgery, the Fresno Bee reports. This is the hospital’s fourth penalty since 2007.

A recent report examining employer-sponsored private insurance claims data found that basing healthcare decisions on Medicare data might not be the best practice. The researchers found that the correlation between total spending per Medicare beneficiary and total spending per privately insured beneficiary was 0.14 in 2011, while the correlation for inpatient spending was 0.267.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is proposing changes in the benchmarks it uses to evaluate ACOs in the Medicare Shared Savings Program.

A hospital in Oceanside, Calif., agreed to pay more than $3.2 million to settle claims it violated laws and Medicare’s prohibition on having an illegal financial relationship with referring physicians.

According to a new 42-page report published by investigators from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), there are significant flaws in the way the FDA tracks drugs after they come to market. 

Caplinger v. Medtronic Inc., the lawsuit in which a patient accused Medtronic of allowing doctors to use its INFUSE Bone Graft product in ways not approved by the FDA, made it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the Court announced it has declined to hear the case. 

Nonprofit hospitals getting challenged on their tax-exempt status have been much in the news of late.