Business Intelligence
The U.S. Department of Defense on Thursday cut out former Tricare West Region contractor UnitedHealthcare and has given the contract to Health Net Federal Services, which also manages the Tricare North Region.
After two dozen infections were reported in French and Dutch hospitals, the company alerted European customers in January 2013 that a scope it manufactured could become contaminated.
More than 90 percent of hospitals across the country make patients' medical record available online, according to a new report from the American Hospital Association.
The threat of ransomware attacks on health care facilities is greater than ever as cybercriminals see the opportunity to make money by encrypting health data in EHRs and demanding payment to unlock it.
S&P Global Ratings has placed Aetna and Humana on creditwatch following the Department of Justice's announcement Thursday to block their merger.
Government says the ratings, which will award between one and five stars to each hospital, will be more useful to consumers than its current mishmash of more than 100 individual metrics, many of which deal with technical matters. The hospital industry, however, fears the ratings will be misleading and oversimplify the many types of care at the institutions.
Research letter published Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry found Medicare beneficiaries had the highest and most rapidly growing rate of "opioid use disorder." Six of every 1,000 recipients struggle with the condition, compared with one out of every 1,000 patients covered through commercial insurance plans.
Pathologists at a dozen hospitals in the state are part of a pilot project -- the first of its kind in the United States -- in which they are reporting cancer diagnoses in close to real-time to the California Cancer Registry. And they are using standardized electronic forms to make their reporting more consistent and accurate.
National guidelines call for doctors to provide full disclosure about adverse events, and studies have shown that those discussions benefit patients. But new research finds that the act of disclosure, combined with stress from the procedure gone wrong, can be an anxious experience for some doctors.
UnitedHealth Group revenues grew 28 percent, or $10.2 billion year-over-year to $46.5 billion, but that was countered by greater losses in the exchange market than projected, according to a second quarter earnings report released Tuesday.