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.

Four health systems, IBM and the Premier healthcare alliance have formed an alliance to improve population health by sharing data analytics and business intelligence strategies and knowledge.

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.

Health IT vendors stepped up to the plate this week with interesting contributions.