With the provision in the Affordable Care Act that provides federal money to states to help them make their Medicaid payment rates for primary care match Medicare rates set to expire at the end of this year, Democratic Senators have introduced a bill to continue federal support for higher Medicaid rates for two more years.

Todd Park will step down as U.S. chief technology officer by the end of 2014, according to several news sources.

Despite the recent high-profile placement of former Procter & Gamble CEO Robert McDonald, 61, as the new Department of Veterans Affairs secretary, hiring of healthcare industry outsiders for hospital leadership positions remains the exception rather than the norm in the insular healthcare industry reveals a new survey of hospital c-suite executive hiring practices.

Non-profit Catholic health system Carondelet Health Network, which operates Carondelet St. Mary’s Hospital and Carondelet St. Joseph’s Hospital in Tucson, Arizona, will settle civil allegations that its hospitals improperly billed the government for inpatient rehabilitation services. The settlement amount, $35 million, is the largest ever False Claims Act recovery in that state, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).

San Diego, CA (PRWEB) August 21, 2014 -- Achieve Health the healthcare technology division of Achieve Internet, an Open Source software engineering firm, is co-hosting a panel discussion and business networking event at the Pillsbury, Winthrop, Shaw, Pittman offices in San Diego CA – September 9th at 5:30PM. The event will include industry experts from the healthcare technology sector who focus on building innovative technology platforms to improve patient engagement, patient to physician communications, patient generated data visualization and helping to drive healthy decisions and improved care.

Quality and safety improvement begins with accurate measurement of the problem, including recording every incident regardless of whether a patient was seriously harmed or not. However, recent data from Massachussetts shows that better measurement can create a drastic increase in the rate of adverse events — in this case an attention grabing jump of 70 percent in one year.

A report issued Friday by the office of Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) finds that states where for-profit hospitals dominate spend around 3 percent more per Medicare beneficiary than states where not-for-profit hospitals dominate.

Physicians and teaching hospitals now have until September 8, 2014, to review payment information manufacturers and group purchasing organizations have submitted to the government about them as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) had to take its online Open Payments verification system down for nearly two weeks to fix glitches and problems with the reported data.