Laura Joszt, MA

As part of National Health IT Week, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, outlined its 10-year vision to achieve interoperability for health IT.

In a study of 3 hospitals in Massachusetts, more than a quarter of patient orders were considered partially defensive medicine, but they only accounted for 13% of costs.

Anthem Blue Cross is partnering with 7 rival hospital systems in California to create a new integrated health system in the Los Angeles and Orange counties. The members will share financial risk and gain.

During the second year of the program, Medicare accountable care organizations reported improvements in nearly all of the quality and patient experience measures, according to data reported by CMS.

Ascension Health will form a joint venture with a division of Envision Healthcare to provide an array of post-acute services, including home care, hospice care, and infusion therapy.

The federal government will terminate health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act for 115,000 individuals who failed to prove they were United States citizens or legal immigrants. Furthermore, another 363,000 people could lose their financial aid because of income reporting discrepancies.

In the wake of Advocate Health Care and NorthShore University HealthSystem's proposed merger, America's Health Insurance Plans is leading the charge to prevent this and similar mergers and acquisitions.

Despite the current high cost of Gilead Science's hepatitis C drug, the next generation version will be even more expensive. However, the company also struck deals with generic drugmakers to bring the drug to developing countries.

More than 1,000 health centers in every US state and territory will receive Affordable Care Act funds to expand their primary care services, according to an announcement from Health and Human Services' Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell.

Despite the benefit of having more choices than ever before to treat patients with multiple sclerosis, the abundance of options has led to more complexity, according to speakers at the 2014 ACTRIMS-ECTRIMS Joint Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts.

As a medium, the Internet neither helps nor harms in multiple sclerosis care - what matters is how clinicians and patients engage in that medium, according to Paul Wicks, PhD, vice president of innovation at PatientsLikeMe.

The second year of the extension study of Lemtrada (alemtuzumab) for multiple sclerosis reported positive interim results with 70% of patients not requiring a third course of treatment.

Although there have been significant advances in multiple sclerosis management, patient preferences need to be taken into account before choosing treatment, according to speakers at the 2014 ACTRIMS-ECTRIMS Joint Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts.

Patients with multiple sclerosis want to be actively engaged in their treatment decisions, which will help their long-term health and medication adherence, according to speakers at the 2014 ACTRIMS-ECTRIMS Joint Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts.

The treatment landscape for multiple sclerosis continues to get more complex month to month, which makes biomarker discovery increasingly important for treating the disease, said Suhayl Dhib-Jalbut, MD, professor at the Rutgers University Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, during his session at the 2014 Joint ACTRIMS-ECTRIMS Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts.

A newly announced merger between Advocate Health Care and NorthShore University HealthSystem will create Illinois' largest integrated healthcare delivery system, serving 3 million patients annually.

Retail health insurance marketplaces, also known as exchanges, are on the cusp of dramatically changing the health insurance business, according to a new report from PwC's Health Research Institute.

Although the survival rate of natalizumab-associated progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML) is better than PML in HIV patients, long-term they may need some assistance and care, Ralf Gold, Ruhr University Bochum in Germany, said at the 2014 Joint ACTRIMS-ECTRIMS Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts.

Advanced imaging techniques are becoming necessary to further understanding of the progression of multiple sclerosis, according to presenters at the 2014 Joint ACTRIMS-ECTRIMS Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts, from September 10-13.

When choosing treatment for a patient, whether he or she has a clinically isolated syndrome or clinically definite multiple sclerosis, providers need to establish a collaborative relationship, according to speakers at the 2014 Joint ACTRIMS-ECTRIMS Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts.

Although baby boomers are expected to place a large burden on healthcare resources, consumer health technologies could help stem increasing needs and costs, according to a new study in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.

An analysis of hospital administrative costs across 8 countries found hospital bureaucracy accounts for a quarter of hospital spending in the United States.

The Health Care Cost Institute and the National Academy for State Healthy Policy are launching a grant program to fund studies that will analyze how the states are implementing health reform.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT released a final rule for electronic health record certification that offers more flexibility for health information technology developers, providers, and consumers.

Extending young adults' eligibility for health insurance on their parents' plans under an Affordable Care Act provision led to a decrease in emergency department visits.

In the largest cities in 15 states plus the District of Columbia the average insurance premiums for the second-lowest-cost silver plan will decline by 0.8% in 2015, according to an analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced it will award $60 million in Navigator grants to 90 organizations in states with federally facilitated and state partnership marketplaces.

For patients who develop infections while staying in a hospital, the chances of it becoming drug resistant increases 1% for each day of hospitalization, according to researchers from the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC).

Numbers for Stage 2 meaningful use attestation remain very low, according to the latest numbers from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The narrow health insurance networks that have become more common under the Affordable Care Act can reduce patient spending by as much as a third, according to research from MIT.