After a deal to merge with the Detroit-based Henry Ford Health System fell through last year, Beaumont Health System wasted no time reaching out to other potential partners and has now gone public with plans to affiliate with Oakwood Healthcare and Botsford Health Care.

Health IT’s role in market failures, and continued barriers caused by lack of interoperability, the “big is better phenomenon” and data lock all were discussed during a lively panel session at the Federal Trade Commission’s workshop, “Examining Health Care Competition,” on March 20.

Quality information is essential for a competitive marketplace and for consumers to make informed decisions on care. A panel delved into the current state of quality measures and their role in the healthcare market during the Federal Trade Commission’s public workshop, “Examining Health Care Competition” on March 21.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) has launched a new initiative focused on "harmonizing the standards for clinical decision support and electronic clinical quality measurement," according to Doug Fridsma, MD, PhD, director of ONC’s Office of Science and Technology.

Open source software has been certified as a 2014 edition EHR module, according to a post on the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology’s blog.

The backlog of appeals pending with the Office of Medicare Hearings and Appeals has grown so large that it is beginning to affect Medicare beneficiaries directly, and that has gotten the attention of Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), a ranking member of the powerful Committee on Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health.

In a move that may, depending on your perspective, either improve current hospital rating systems or create greater confusion, the Leapfrog Group, the leading non-profit hospital quality surveyor, and Castlight Health, a leading provider of cloud-based software for healthcare data, are partnering on a “consumer-friendly” analysis of nationwide hospital performance.

In a set of eight draft recommendations, the National Quality Foundation (NQF) addresses the concern that reimbursement models tied to outcome measures may unfairly penalize health systems serving greater numbers of poor patients.