Five years since the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and healthcare leaders have adapted to a changing industry but there are more transformations to come, according to a new report from the PwC Health Research Institute.

Organizations are studying interprofessional collaboration and determining the best ways to teach providers how to collaborate.

Physician practices are engaging in new healthcare payment models intended to improve quality and reduce costs, but are finding that they need help with successfully managing increasing amounts of data and figuring out how to respond to the diversity of programs and quality metrics from different payers, according to a new joint study by the RAND Corporation and the American Medical Association (AMA).

The Meaningful Use (MU) program “should have been a really good idea,” said Chair Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee during a hearing about the program and ongoing problems with interoperability.

The Bipartisan Policy Center has launched its five-point "FDA: Advancing Medical Innovation" initiative, to develop viable policy options to reduce the time and cost associated with the discovery, development and delivery of safe and effective drugs and medical devices to patients.

Expanding blood pressure screenings to non-primary care settings could help identify more patients with hypertension and result in improved control and management of the condition, according to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Hypertension.

The Affordable Care Act is now five years old and the PwC Health Research Institute marked the occasion with a report on trends spurred by the law and how those trends will continue to impact healthcare over the next five years.

More consolidation among hospitals and providers is expected in the next few years.