Susan Morse

Kentucky-based pharmacy services business PharMerica will pay $31.5 million to settle a federal lawsuit that it dispensed oxycodone, fentanyl and other narcotics without valid prescriptions and submitted false claims to Medicare Part D for the drugs, according to the company and U.S. Department of Justice.

In a letter to House leadership, Rep. Scott Peters, D-Calif. and 17 other Democrats are calling for lawmakers to act quickly on a bill repealing the medical device tax before Memorial Day.

While awareness over nurse safety has grown, a new survey by The Leapfrog Group found 40 percent of hospitals fail to comply with all 21 endorsed safe practices in the field.

American Medical Association says the readmission penalty is unnecessary since other other pay-for-performance programs already measure complications such as surgical site infections.

The move away from inpatient care towards services provided outside of the hospital setting is leading many healthcare systems to sell off properties owned by their hospitals in an effort to scale back and raise some extra cash.

The combined entity, dubbed Hackensack Meridian Health, will have 11 hospitals, 25,000 employees and another 6,000 physicians on staff.

Health system saves $11 million from 1,254 unnecessary readmissions and $2 million saved through the prevention of 110 venous thromboembolisms.

The state previously had a malpractice limit of $350,000, but in 2012, the state's Supreme Court ruled the cap on damages for pain and suffering unconstitutional.

Text of a bill by Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, to delay the switch to ICD-10 diagnostic coding surfaced on Monday, in which it requests further study on the disruption on healthcare providers could face resulting from the replacement of ICD-9.

As providers face declines in reimbursement from commercial plans, they are seeing more patients covered under the lower-reimbursement rates for Medicaid and Medicare.