News

The House of Representatives has passed, by a vote of 243 to 183, the Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act, which permanently repeals a 21 percent fee reduction scheduled for January 2010 and replaces the physician payment formula with a more stable system.

The HWS Labor Market Pulse Index, a quarterly barometer of local market healthcare workforce fluctuations, shows near-term demand for healthcare workers growing fastest in Houston, Orlando and Atlanta for the third quarter of 2009.

Harvard researchers say an increase in the use of IT in hospitals hasn't lowered costs or made hospitals more efficient.

Concerned about market conditions and its own financial footing, HealthPort officials have postponed plans to go public.

A proposed increase in subsidies for unemployed Americans in the COBRA program could create havoc for employers and those charged with administering the program.

Trinitas Regional Medical Center in Elizabeth, N.J., has agreed to pay $3.02 million, plus interest, to settle Medicare fraud charges filed by the Justice Department.

An increase in ambulatory surgery centers in Pennsylvania is placing pressure on the state’s overall healthcare use and costs, according to the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania.

A study by the Greater Cincinnati Health Council reveals that Cincinnati hospitals provided more than $276 million in uncompensated care in 2008, a 15 percent increase over 2007 numbers.

The argument over the right age for women to begin mammograms was pushed to the center of the healthcare reform debate with Monday's release of new guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

The U.S. National Library of Medicine has released a draft rules-based mapping from SNOMED Clinical Terms to the International Classification of Diseases, 9th revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) to support healthcare reimbursement.