An electronic alert system is an effective tool to encourage patients to take preadmission antiseptic showers, which reduces the risk for surgical site infections, according to a study from the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.

NEW YORK--Aetna (NYSE: AET) and NYUPN Clinically Integrated Network, LLC (NYUPN) today announced an accountable care collaboration that is designed to improve patient care and lower health care costs. Effective July 1, NYUPN and its more than 1,800 clinical faculty and health care professionals affiliated with NYU Langone Medical Center and University Physicians Network (UPN) began working more closely with Aetna to ensure improved care coordination and care quality. Aetna will financially reward NYUPN for quality health outcomes for approximately 24,000 members in both commercial and Medicare Advantage plans.

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 6, 2014--Practice Fusion, the nation's largest cloud-based electronic health record (EHR) platform, today announced the acquisition of Ringadoc, an innovator of next-generation patient-doctor communication tools. This acquisition gives Practice Fusion a springboard for entry into the telemedicine market, an industry expected to swell to $4.5 billion in 2018.

Post your procedure online and physicians will bid to perform the surgery. A new company has taken price transparency to a new level with this Priceline-like business model.

Royal Philips and Accenture have developed proof of concept software connecting a wearable display to Emotiv Insight Brainware that could ultimately give more independence to patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and other neurodegenerative diseases.

The Dept. of Health and Human Services has granted $106.7 million in awards to 46 states, Washington D.C. and five jurisdictions as part of the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program (Home Visiting Program) established by the Affordable Care Act.

The majority of the recent decline in healthcare spending growth from 2009 to 2011 was due to the economic downturn, according to study published in the August issue of Health Affairs.

Boston, MA, July 30, 2014 – As the nation grapples with growing physician shortages across the country, The Physicians Foundation and the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (UNC) today launched a new innovative tool to help policy makers, physicians and health systems better plan where to practice and what type of practitioners will be needed in order to meet the growing utilization of healthcare in the United States.