In an effort to steer patients toward less expensive sites of care, Anthem has instituted policies in several states that if an emergency room visit is determined to be unnecessary, they may end up footing the bill—something 34-year-old Allison Wrenne learned the hard way.

The first few days of open enrollment on the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges saw more than 600,000 people sign up for coverage, up 79 percent from last year and setting a new record start for enrollment on Healthcare.gov.

The TelePsy eHealth platform provides mental health professionals and general practitioners with digital tools to support them in the diagnostics, evaluation and treatment of their service users. Thanks to an integration with the secure Alterdesk Messenger, TelePsy can now offer its users chat and video call functionalities. “It is one of the biggest functional updates we have had in years”, says Marco Essed, CEO of TelePsy.

AMBOSS, a breakthrough medical study platform, today introduced its comprehensive test preparation and in-depth study tools for NBME® Subject Examinations (e.g., Shelf Exams) and USMLE™ Step 2 CK. More than 200,000 medical students and physicians worldwide rely on the AMBOSS platform for test preparation, in-depth studying, and as a clinical companion. AMBOSS is the only digital resource that includes more than 2,000 exam questions that are integrated with 15,000+ medical library topics. Specific Shelf Exam preparation is available for medicine, surgery, pediatrics, clinical neurology, obstetrics and gynecology, and psychiatry rotations.

Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini said the future of his company will be tailored towards a more individualized version of healthcare, calling his interest in an Apple-style business model for the industry “a real deal.” One deal he wouldn’t talk about, however, was the rumored purchase of Aetna by CVS.

Like most healthcare conventions this year, the 2017 meeting of the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) featured plenty of talk about healthcare policy coming out of Washington, D.C. With much of the attention taken up by the Affordable Care Act’s future, AHIMA’s leaders were considering the future of a different law: Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Accessing an online cognitive behavioral therapy (CCBT) program could improve the quality of life of patients with mood and anxiety disorders, according to a study published in JAMA Psychiatry.

Basic elements of hospital design—such as patient rooms, hallways and how many operating rooms a facility has versus childbirth facilities—will be challenged in the coming years, wrote Neel Shah, MD, MPP, assistant professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School.