Management consultant Jorge Perez has purchased nearly 20 rural hospitals in Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Florida and other states and managed to save them from closing. His secret, however, appears to involve billing insurance companies for laboratory work not performed at those hospitals.

A “C” grade was the most common for hospitals analyzed in the fall edition of the Leapfrog Group’s hospital safety grades report, the first to include results for Maryland hospitals.

CMS Administrator Seema Verma, MPH, said the agency is launching a new initiative called “Meaningful Measures” aimed at focusing quality reporting on outcome-based measures, rather than processes.

U.S. News and World Report evaluated more than 15,000 nursing homes for its 2017-18 Best Nursing Home list. Some 2,285 of them—15 percent of all of those evaluated—made the list by earning a rating of 4.5 or higher on a 5-point scale.

Hospitals which serve more low-income patients could be penalized an additional $198,000 per year if the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) is adjusted to include more conditions, according to a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Some orthopedic surgeons are performing total ankle replacements, a procedure once disparaged as “borderline quackery,” according to the Washington Post, but is now being touted as a legitimate option for relieving arthritic pain.

The operators of two freestanding emergency departments (EDs) in Dallas—Highland Park Emergency Room and Preston Hollow Emergency Room—have gone to court demanding Google share the identities of those who posted 22 negative reviews of their facilities.

Operating revenue fell faster than operating expenses for two years at hospitals which had been merged into or acquired by a new system, with no evidence of improvement on quality measures, according to a report released by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions and Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA).