Chris Anderson

Registered nurses in western Massachusetts have staged a two-day picket of Baystate Health facilities over their frustration with a 12-month impasse in negotiating a new contract.

The California Hospital Association last week petitioned a federal district court to grant a preliminary injunction against California's Medicaid program, called Medi-Cal, to prevent it from making 10 percent reimbursement cuts primarily affecting hospital-based skilled nursing facilities.

As workers continue to pick up more of the costs associated with employer-sponsored health plans, they want more help from their employers to manage their health and get the most out of their health plans, according to a new survey from Aon Hewitt.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services yesterday issued its first public rebuke under its new powers to review health insurance increases greater than 10 percent, calling on Everence Insurance in Pennsylvania to cut its planned premium increases to 5,000 members.

For the third straight month the number of Americans who continue to smoke topped 21 percent, despite the fact that access to life's basic necessities such as food, shelter, medicine and healthcare reached a four-year low, according to the October 2011 Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index (WBI).

The ranks of American adults without health insurance is now 17.3 percent of the population, a rate that is the highest on record, according to a Gallup poll measuring uninsurance rates in the third quarter.

The Aetna Foundation and four other healthcare foundations in Connecticut have announced plans to fund a survey of residents aimed at finding out how well healthcare is delivered in the state.

The average compensation for leadership executives at healthcare systems increased 3 percent in 2011 and hospitals increased nursing employment by 1.8 according to new survey results released by Integrated Health Strategies.

On the same day voters in Ohio were summarily rejecting by a margin of nearly 2-to-1 the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act, justices at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia weighed in with a ruling upholding the mandate as constitutional.

Bundling payments to providers as a means to cut healthcare costs is proving harder to do than originally anticipated, according to a new study from non-profit research organization Rand Corp.