A bipartisan bill in the Senate is calling for greater transparency in the Medicare claims data program.

The Healthcare Innovation and Marketplace Technologies Act, reintroduced by Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) on June 13, calls for the establishment of an Office of Wireless Health in the FDA. The bill was first introduced last December but did not progress beyond the committee level.

Healthcare inflation in the U.S. is projected to dip to 6.5 percent in 2014, according to PwC’s Health Research Institute (HRI) in its annual report, Medical Cost Trend: Behind the Numbers. The ongoing slowdown in the healthcare growth rate defies historical post-recession patterns and is likely to be sustained even as the Affordable Care Act adds millions more newly-insured Americans to the health system in 2014.

Shasta Regional Medical Center (SRMC) agreed to pay $275,000 and undertake a corrective action plan after a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) investigation uncovered HIPAA violations stemming from unauthorized disclosure of a patient’s personal health information.  

Former Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) administrator, Donald Berwick, MD, MPP, has set his sights of the position of governor of Massachusetts.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) is seeking several test EHRs for the agency to use in the Meaningful Use (MU) attestation process.

A recently released survey by the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) adds to a chorus of studies finding that the healthcare industry is widely unprepared for the ICD-10 conversion, which becomes mandatory on Oct. 1, 2014.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has released a proposed rule outlining program integrity guidelines for the Health Insurance Marketplace (Marketplace) and premium stabilization programs.