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More than 1,300 healthcare providers operate on the edge of the U.S. healthcare system. They are critical access hospitals, small facilities that have fewer than 25 beds and are often in remote, rural areas and provide needed care to smaller populations.

Meanwhile, proposed legislation could cost physicians more, leading to more alignment with hospitals.

“Not all readmissions can or should be prevented; indeed, some are planned as part of sound clinical care,” AHA says.

Participants in the program are expected to scale their value-based payments to 30 percent by 2016 and 50 percent by 2018.

Some health systems are trying to help patients avoid high-cost bills altogether, by working with insurers to craft value-based plans that offer low out-of-pocket costs.

Department of Justice says chain allowed patients to undergo radiation cancer treatment that was not supervised by radiation oncologists.

Under the provision, CMS could continue to use Medicare Administrative Contractors to "probe and educate" providers on their likely compliance with the two-midnight rule.

Bill calls for stiffer fines for tax delinquent Medicare service providers, keeping reimbursement for acute care providers to 1 percent and by upping premiums for wealthier Medicare beneficiaries.

The report in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association found that even after controlling for age, race, marital status and children in the home, males in nursing out-earned females by nearly $7,700 per year in outpatient settings and nearly $3,900 in hospitals.

Staring down the sometimes troubled and opaque past of medical devices, and upward trend in spending, one national insurer is trying to build momentum for a universal way to compare and track outcomes.