Chris Anderson
Now that is has proven itself by beating the top two champions of the television game show Jeopardy! IBM’s Watson technology is poised for its first commercial opportunity via a partnership with health insurance giant WellPoint that should see it providing clinical support to doctors as early as the first quarter of 2012.
In a year marked by a projected 20 percent increase in healthcare mergers and acquisitions, perhaps one of the biggest M&A stories was one that didn’t happen: Community Health Systems’ hostile bid to acquire Tenet Healthcare.
By 2015, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services anticipates the number of people receiving health insurance via Medicaid will increase by more than 20 million as a result of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. People eligible for Medicare will also increase at a rate of nearly 3 million per year, as the Baby Boomer generation hits retirement age.
The simmering dispute over a new contract between Western Pennsylvania’s largest private payer, Highmark Inc., and the dominant health system in the region, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), reached a full boil mid-year when Highmark announced plans to acquire UPMC rival West Penn Allegheny Health System.
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.
Health insurer Humana Inc. announced today that it has acquired Anvita Health, an analytics company that uses a broad range of data to help provide clinical insights and improve the delivery of healthcare.
In advance of today's scheduled Senate subcommittee hearing on the proposed $29.1 billion merger of pharmacy benefit management companies Express Scripts and Medco, three Republican senators have sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission urging them to pay special attention to the dominant position the merged company would have in the mail order pharmacy market.
More than half of all employers said they will continue to offer employer-sponsored health benefits after health reform is fully enacted according to the results of a survey of benefits decisions makers released by GfK Custom Research North America.
More than 2,400 doctors, nurses and health advocates sent a letter this week to the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius protesting the Institute of Medicine's recommendations to HHS on how to determine an essential health benefits package as mandated under health reform.