Participating in a national quality improvement initiative doesn't make a hospital any safer than those organizations not participating in such programs.

Capital BlueCross has announced that its Accountable Care Arrangements, an innovation that the company first introduced in 2011, are yielding excellent results including improved quality of care, healthier customers, and lower health care costs.

UnitedHealthcare, the largest private health insurer in the U.S., is now paying out $36 billion a year to providers as part of value-based contracts, nearly triple the total from three years ago. That number will rise 20 percent this year to $43 billion and reach $65 billion by 2018, the company said.

Calgary Scientific Inc., a company known for creating transformative technology for the medical industry and beyond, announced today the release of ResolutionMD® 5.0, which offers better access to health information, supports increased teamwork and enhances communication among practitioners and patients.The new software version enables practitioners to instantly access expertise via live consultations using their web or mobile devices. Reports can now be created using voice dictation to complete patient records immediately and the need to physically transfer images on CD is drastically reduced with new image exchange capability.

The lack of EHR interoperability between the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense has led to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) adding the problem to its list of "high-risk" areas.

Need more evidence that healthcare is behind the times when it comes to embracing technology? A new survey of consumers suggests that fewer than 10 percent of insured Americans turn to digital tools when making physician appointments.

Children’s Hospital Los Angeles is committing $50 million to expand its Center for Personalized Medicine to advance efforts to use the human genome to make more effective diagnoses, targeted therapies and personalized healthcare for pediatric patients.

Patients preferred physicians who wore formal attire in the majority of studies evaluated by researchers conducting a systematic review of published literature.