Unfriendly malpractice laws and a high cost-of-living are driving physicians away from Connecticut, according to State Rep. Prasad Srinivasin. And he should know, since he’s a physician himself.

Rather than use prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) only to track opioid prescriptions, two physicians writing in the American Journal of Managed Care suggested the concept be expanded to collect and report information on all prescriptions.

Healthcare groups including HIMSS, AMIA and CHIME have written a letter to members of Congress asking for a national patient identifier to increase patient safety and the electronic exchange of data.

Mylan, the manufacturer of EpiPen, will pay $465 million to the federal government to “resolve questions” about whether the autoinjector was misclassified as a generic drug, therefore reducing the quarterly rebates Mylan owed.

Adding fields for medical device information on claims reimbursement forms would help CMS better track how much Medicare spends on recalled or defective devices, according to HHS’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG).

A new law in California will require hospitals in Los Angeles County to report incidence of certain “superbugs,” the Los Angeles Times reported. California is one of roughly half the U.S. states that had not required the reporting in the past. 

The controversy over the price increases for EpiPens isn’t going away, as Mylan is now being accused by CMS of overcharging Medicare and Medicaid by classifying the autoinjector as a generic drug.

While much of the 2016 presidential election appears to defy historical trends, the origins of the health policies put forward by the two candidates can easily be traced back to the mid-20th century, according to a column in the New England Journal of Medicine.