Operations

Technology and connectivity will continue its steady infiltration of the healthcare landscape, branding and trust take priority over convenience, and the advancement and integration of connected health technologies will hinge on cybersecurity in 2016, PwC said.

State insurance exchanges are healthy financially even without the federal funding that ran out this year, a top Obama administration official told a House subcommittee Tuesday. But that official refused to predict if any of the remaining 13 state exchanges would eventually need to shift to the federal exchange.

Intermountain Healthcare Chief Executive Officer Charles W. Sorenson will retire in October 2016, the Utah-based system announced on Monday, after spending 17 years as an executive for the celebrated healthcare provider.

San Francisco-based Dignity Health has announced it will limit its investments in thermal coal companies, focusing instead on sustainability and investment opportunities that address climate change.

Since 1993, 11 people have been killed in abortion-related attacks -- doctors, clinic staff, and last week, a police officer and two visitors in the line of fire at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs. While the investigation continues into the shooter's background and motives, David Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University, says that stalking and harassment pose a much more common threat to abortion providers and their families.

From 2010 to 2014, there's been 2.1 million fewer hospital-acquired conditions; 87,000 fewer hospital-acquired condition related deaths; and $19.8 billion in costs have been averted, according to CMS Deputy Director Patrick Conway.

Nearly three-quarters of health systems with more than 300 beds -- and 81 percent of providers with fewer than 300 beds -- are shifting their focus to IT outsourcing as bottom-line pressures force systems to choose outside vendors, according to a new Black Book Research survey of hospital finance and tech administrators.

In the last five years, 57 rural hospitals in the United States have closed, according to data from the Rural Health Research Program at the University of North Carolina. Others have declared bankruptcy, like the Mendocino Coast District Hospital.

A selloff of UnitedHealth Group stock on Friday pushed other major healthcare stocks lower following the insurer's warning that it may exit the Obamacare marketplace exchange business.

As the state-run Hawaii Health Systems Corp. faces a $50 million budget shortfall, one of its key executives is mulling his options after laying claim to some of the system's most successful initiatives.