News
Two topics dominated pharmaceutical industry news in 2011: Generic drug savings and drug shortages.
A joint venture announced by GE and Microsoft on Wednesday, will leverage the platform experience of Microsoft and GE's core healthcare competencies in clinical applications, with the goal of providing real time data to improve patient experience and clinical outcomes.
For the first three-quarters of 2011, the healthcare merger and acquisition market posted 707 deals with a combined worth of $185.9 billion. Experts predict total healthcare M&A activity for the year will surpass 2010 by 20 percent, according to a report from Irving Levin Associates.
One in three first-time participants in a company-sponsored, lab-based wellness program were not aware they were at high risk for a serious medical condition, according to an article published in the peer-reviewed journal PLoS ONE.
A lack of significant progress on implementing both HIPAA 5010 and ICD-10 by providers is unlikely to change the hard line taken by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, despite a late year challenge by the American Medical Association.
Throughout 2011, the sustainable growth rate (SGR) issue continued to intensify. Stakeholders within the healthcare industry, in particular those groups representing physicians, lobbied Congress vigorously to “fix” the SGR permanently. Many hoped that the Joint Selection Committee on Deficit Reduction, the so-called supercommittee, would offer up a solution as it deliberated on how to reduce the federal deficit.
The final regulations for accountable care organizations (ACOs), released in October by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, were a bit surprising, as they contained major revisions from the draft regulations announced earlier in the year.
The biggest issues impacting doctors in 2011 are going to be dogging them into 2012 says the Physicians Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports physicians.
One in three adult patients discharged from a hospital to the community does not see a physician within 30 days of discharge, according to a new study by the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC), and that puts them at risk of readmission.
It's a great time to be an mHealth entrepreneur, experts said at Tuesday's Mobile Health Venture Fair, presented by mHIMSS, at the mHealth Summit in Washington, DC.