Alan Andrew Beauchamp, Dallas-based Forest Park Medical Center’s co-founder and former manager, pleaded guilty in a $200 million healthcare fraud case. Beauchamp recruited high-volume specialty doctors and paid them $40 million in bribes and kickbacks to perform surgeries.

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) announced a four-year, $300 million deal with 23andMe, a personal genomics and biotechnology company based in Mountain View, California. The British pharmaceutical company will have access to genetic information of 23andMe’s five million customers.

Robert Wilkie—scheduled to be sworn in as the new Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs on Monday, July 30—has big plans for reorganizing the upper levels of the agency. His efforts are aimed at boosting flagging morale while ensuring leadership remains nonpartisan.

Ximena Barreto, a communications official in HHS since December 2017, resigned after CNN and Media Matters reported she spread conspiracy theories and made anti-Muslim statements on social media. Barreto was placed on leave in April.

CMS released its plan to reduce paperwork and improve patient care on Friday, July 27, that could have implications for 40 percent of Medicare payments. The plan combines four levels of paperwork and four levels of reimbursement to be combined in a single form and one flat fee for each physician appointment.

Despite hitting a bump in the road with Medicaid work requirements in Kentucky, the Trump administration will continue to approve applications from other states. HHS Secretary Alex Azar, in a speech to the Heritage Foundation on Thursday, July 26, reiterated a commitment to establishing such requirements for able-bodied people who receive Medicaid.

National healthcare search and consulting firm Merritt Hawkins released its 2018 Review of Physician and Advanced Practitioner Recruiting Incentives, which listed radiology as the fifth most requested medical specialty searched in fiscal year 2017-2018, up from 10th in the previous year's report.

Eight years ago, Tom Price, MD, warned how “defensive medicine” drove healthcare costs, estimating 26 cents of every dollar went to unnecessary tests to protect physicians and hospitals from malpractice suits. The estimate wasn’t taken seriously back then, but researchers are now offering an estimate that 5 percent of costs can be attributed to such practices.