Medical industry executives told Congress that they would like to see more legislation allowing sharing of patient data, but legislators expressed reservations about unauthorized access to protected patient information, reported The Hill.

On Wednesday, representatives of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) were once again called upon by House republicans to explain what is being done to combat waste, fraud and abuse in Medicare. Their responses give a glimpse into the agencies current priorities, especially as they affect healthcare providers.

A new Office of Inspector General (OIG) fraud alert warns of two arrangements with clinical laboratories that it considers illegal kickbacks for referrals — specimen processing arrangements and registry arrangements — that are subtle enough that not all ordering physicians who receive the payments may be aware that they are breaking the law.

Indiana and Ohio non-profit Parkview Health System has reached a deal with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to settle potential violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Privacy Rule that occurred when boxes of medical records were delivered to the home of a retiring doctor when she was not there.

Can the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation survive the political crossfire in which it finds itself caught?

HORSHAM, Pa.--NextGen Healthcare Information Systems, LLC., a wholly owned subsidiary of Quality Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: QSII) and a leading provider of healthcare information systems and connectivity solutions, announced today it has teamed with 3M Health Information Systems to offer 3M’s robust, web-based ICD-10 Education Program industry wide. The agreement strengthens the arsenal of resources NextGen Healthcare makes available to aid both clients and non-clients as they successfully transition to ICD-10.

If enacted, the bi-partisan Senate bill would change Medicare’s Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program to avoid possibly unfairly penalizing hospitals that treat a greater percentage of poor, Medicare and Medicaid dual-eligible patients.

The Department of Health & Human Services rated the launch of HealthCare.gov as having a low-risk of failure six months before it went live, according to the Washington Post and a recent report by the General Accounting Office. It wasn’t until closer to the launch that the department suddenly bumped up the risk from “moderately high risk” or “high risk,” the report found.