Patients for far too long have been left out of the healthcare loop. The Office of the National Coordinator is trying to change that through not just Meaningful Use regulations, but also by working to build a coalition of stakeholders better equipped to engage patients, according to the speakers of a Jan. 17 webinar hosted by the National eHealth Collaborative.

The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation entered a pay-for-performance agreement with two medical schools and one private provider organization that will award up to $59 million to providers for meeting quality and efficiency targets.

Walmart has committed $670,000 to underwrite the Arkansas Payment Improvement Initiative, a statewide effort to transform healthcare delivery with the hopes of containing costs and improving quality.

The Department of Health and Human Services announced that an additional 106 accountable care organizations are participating in the Medicare Shared Savings Program, bringing the total to more than 250.

As healthcare reform takes root and accountable care organizations (ACOs) make their mark on the map, the healthcare landscape grows more complex, according to a January report from CSC.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued a request for information regarding the collection and reporting of clinical quality measures.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) has published a health IT patient safety plan that builds off of the Institute of Medicine's recommendations to more fully describe the role of health IT in terms of patient safety and to identify ways multiple stakeholders can work to use health IT to strengthen patient safety efforts.

With several pay-for-performance initiatives set to expand in the near future, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) examined private sector initiatives that base or adjust physician payment rates on care quality and efficiency, and assessed their applicability to the Medicare program.