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Quality and Safety

By Rene Letourneau | 08:06 am | July 06, 2012
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a proposed rule that most medical devices distributed in the United States carry a unique device identifier (UDI).
By Rene Letourneau | 11:31 am | July 03, 2012
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has awarded more than $971 million to continue improving preparedness and health outcomes for a wide range of public health threats within every state, eight U.S. territories and four of the nation's largest metropolitan areas, HHS officials announced Monday.
By Kelsey Brimmer | 09:59 am | July 03, 2012
Large pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has agreed to pay $3 billion in order to resolve charges of engaging in illegal schemes related to unlawful marketing and pricing of some of the drugs it manufactures in what has become the largest healthcare fraud scheme in the country's history.
By Chris Anderson | 10:46 am | July 02, 2012
Despite a decline in the number of commercially insured children, healthcare spending on children grew at a faster rate than healthcare spending on adults from 2007 to 2010, according to a new report from the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI).
By Kelsey Brimmer | 10:13 am | July 02, 2012
Healthcare organizations that were previously sitting along the sidelines when it came to healthcare reform are going to have to get the ball rolling now that the Supreme Court has made the ruling to uphold the 2010 healthcare law, according to a report published Friday by the PwC Health Research Institute (HRI).
By Bernie Monegain | 09:05 am | July 02, 2012
The National Quality Forum voted to uphold its decision to endorse an all-cause hospital-wide readmissions measure, which had been challenged by seven hospitals.
By Tom Sullivan | 01:19 pm | June 28, 2012
Government Health IT Editor Tom Sullivan spoke with Bill Bernstein, chairman of the healthcare division at law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, which works with states and providers on health IT and related public policy issues, on the implication of the Supreme Court's ACA ruling and how it affects how the law will ultimately play out, health IT projects, and the impact it could have on Republican presumptive nominee Mitt Romney, who has been stumping on ACA repeal.
By Kelsey Brimmer | 08:52 am | June 28, 2012
In 2010, Scott Hawig, chief operating officer at Duke University Health System, and Jim Bohnsack, executive vice president of product development at Transunion Healthcare, decided to analyze the behavior, demographic and financial makeup of one hospital system's patient population against service lines to determine how to improve patient outcomes and reduce costs at the same time.
By Erin McCann | 11:09 am | June 27, 2012
The Alaska Department of Health and Social Services (DHSS) -- the state's Medicaid agency -- has agreed to pay $1.7 million to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to settle possible violations of the HIPAA Security Rule, making it the second largest settlement for HIPAA violations to date.
By Kelsey Brimmer | 07:03 pm | June 26, 2012
Over the last seven months, St. Joseph Health System (SJHS), a large healthcare organization located in California and western Texas, has been using a multi-disciplinary approach to engage its physicians and clinicians in understanding the impact of clinical practice patterns and resource variability.