Rene Letourneau

In light of the record drug shortages currently plaguing U.S. healthcare, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) is calling for a Federal Trade Commission investigation into gray market drug resellers' exorbitant price mark-ups as possible price gouging.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) reported Thursday that nearly 20.5 million people with Medicare have had a free Annual Wellness Visit or received other preventive services with no deductible or cost sharing this year, thanks to funding through the Affordable Care Act.

Real-time location system firm AeroScout announced Wednesday that it has acquired Sentient Health, which provides software and services for optimizing inventory management of consumable medical supplies.

2010 was a record year for the number of practicing physician assistants (PAs) in the United States. The American Academy of Physician Assistants' 2010 Census Report found numbers of practicing PAs reached 83,466, up 100 percent from 10 years ago.

Healthcare Finance News Managing Editor René Letourneau spoke recently with Jim Webb, senior vice president of operations at Provista, an Irving, Texas-based group purchasing organization, about how to get the most out of your GPO.

As the number of self-paying patients and high-deductible health plans grows, providers are encountering more difficulty than ever before with collecting payment for services rendered.

New technologies in remote patient monitoring will push the market to $22.2 billion by 2015 as these solutions are used increasingly to combat soaring healthcare costs and personnel shortages and to reduce hospitalization times, according to a recent report from healthcare market research firm Kalorama Information.

The proportion of Americans who reported going without or delaying needed healthcare declined modestly between 2007 and 2010, according to a national report released in late August by the Center for Studying Health System Change.