Successfully achieving change in healthcare is 90 percent about implementation, said Andy Slavitt, acting director of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, speaking at the 34th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco.

President Obama has fended off Congressional Republicans’ latest stab at rolling back the Affordable Care Act, but this time GOP legislators says things are different: They succeeded for the first time in getting a repeal bill onto the President’s desk.

From long waits to manipulated medical records to preventable deaths, the Department of Veterans Affairs has had more than its share of problems over the past few years. That’s no secret. 

Anticipating a plunge in the number of uninsured patients, the framers of the Affordable Care Act reduced disproportionate-share (DSH) payments to hospitals serving outsized indigent and Medicaid populations. A recent crunch of the numbers shows the cuts are placing particular pains on children’s hospitals. 

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced on Dec. 18 that it planned on blocking the proposed merger of two major hospital systems in Chicago, the third time in six weeks that the FTC challenged a proposed hospital merger.

By cutting patients’ out-of-pocket expenses for screening mammography, the Affordable Care Act succeeded in sending many more women for the exams. Now comes a review of Medicare claims revealing that the effect was nowhere to be found in the target population for screening colonoscopy.

The House of Representatives released specifics on a $1.1 trillion funding bill that includes a package of tax breaks, coming down to the wire on Tuesday, Dec. 15, to finalize the bill by the deadline.

The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) is urging the federal government to give healthcare providers more time to adjust to recent changes to the Meaningful Use program before mandating new and burdensome Stage 3 requirements.