Laura Joszt, MA

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's advisory committee for the Data for Health initiative released its first report with insights, concerns, and ideas from the public about how to harness data to improve health.

States that decide to carve out their pharmacy benefits from Medicaid plans have significantly higher costs, according to a report requested by America's Health Insurance Plans from The Menges Group.

Physicians were accepting nearly equal amounts of new Medicare and privately insured patients in 2013, but much fewer were accepting new Medicaid patients, according to a new report from the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics.

Although healthcare stakeholders view comparative effectiveness research (CER) as important to healthcare, respondents to a survey from the National Pharmaceutical Council admitted that they haven't yet seen the impact of CER.

The Supreme Court of the United States ruled on Tuesday that providers cannot sue states over low Medicaid reimbursement rates, overturning the decision of the lower court.

The Affordable Care Act's insurance exchanges leave much to be desired with regard to transparency when patients are shopping for health coverage, according to a survey from the National Health Council.

Increased insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act not only did not cause a sharp increase in new patients, but there has not been any change in how sick patients were who sought care, according to a report from athenahealth and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Although the Supreme Court's decision on King v. Burwell could remove subsidies from the federal marketplace, Americans prefer HealthCare.gov over the state-run exchanges, according to poll results from right-wing advocacy group Foundation for Government Accountability.

When Aledade launched in 2014, founder Farzad Mostashari, MD, former national coordinator for health information technology (IT), was spending about half the time talking to doctors not about his new company, but about value-based payments and what accountable care organizations were.

During his closing keynote at the World Health Care Congress, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich echoed the sessions of the previous 3 days by discussing current and future change in healthcare.

The adoption of the Affordable Care Act's medical loss ratio provision, which requires insurers spend 80%-85% of premiums on medical care and quality improvement, has yielded large benefits for consumers from 2011 to 2013.

The Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network kicked off with its inaugural meeting bringing together public and private sector actors to discuss efforts to move healthcare toward a system that pays based on quality rather than quantity.

With the Affordable Care Act's requirement that most nongroup health insurance plans offer minimum coverage standards, concerns arose about plan cancellations affecting those who already had insurance coverage. However, recent data found cancellations were uncommon.

On the fifth anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, HHS' Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation announced that healthcare reform was responsible for a $7.4 billion reduction in uncompensated care costs in 2014.

Big data, interoperability, and patient engagement were the topics of discussion during one of the opening keynote sessions at the World Health Care Congress held March 22-25 in Washington, DC.

More than $3 billion was returned to the Medicare Trust Fund in 2014 from individuals and companies attempting to defraud federal health programs, according to an announcement by HHS.

CMS released its proposed rules for Stage 3 meaningful use for the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Records Incentive Programs. The proposed rules will include greater flexibility and drive interoperability, according to HHS.

Patients enrolled in plans on the public health insurance exchange filled more prescriptions than commercial members during the first year of enrollment under Affordable Care Act, according to a report from Prime Therapeutics.

Physician practices looking to engage in new healthcare payment models reported they need help and guidance to further advance delivery reforms, according to a joint study from the RAND Corporation and the American Medical Association.

Using plan data as of November 2014, researchers at the Urban Institute determined that the national average premium increase was 2.9% over the previous year with the South experiencing the largest increases.

For the last 17 years Congress has passed temporary 1-year fixes to prevent the Sustainable Growth Rate from enacting steep cuts to Medicare payments. This year, Congress is again flirting with the possibility of creating a permanent fix.

Millions more Americans have become exposed to another cyberattack on a health plan as Premera Blue Cross announced it had been the target of a sophisticated attack to gain access to its information technology systems.

Since open enrollment began in October 2013, 14.1 million adults have signed up for health insurance with an additional 2.3 million gaining coverage through the provision covering young adults.

The cost of treating the hepatitis C virus with newly approved therapies could total $90 billion over the next 5 years, representing 6.6% of the country's annual prescription spending.

Survival rates for 4 common, high-risk surgical procedures vary significantly hospital-to-hospital, according to the findings of a new report from The Leapfrog Group and Castlight Health.

Co-Editors-in-Chief of The American Journal of Managed Care A. Mark Fendrick, MD, and Michael E. Chernew, PhD, and former Editor-in-Chief J. Sanford Schwartz, MD, recently wrote about value in healthcare and the use of preventive services in Health Affairs Blog.

During the session "Principles of Immunotherapy" at the National Comprehensive Cancer Network 20th Annual Conference, Anthony J. Olszanski, RPh, MD, from the Fox Chase Cancer Center, described the complex interplay between the immune system and cancer, and some of the current immunotherapies being used today.

The most recent Surgeon General Report on Smoking and Health initiated the decision to create smoking cessation guidelines for cancer patients, Peter G. Shields, MD, said during his session announcing the new NCCN Guidelines.

Resource constraints may confine the ability of physicians to deliver optimal cancer care to all patients across the world, which the National Comprehensive Cancer Network is acknowledging by resource stratifying its Guidelines.

The roundtable discussion on the second day of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network 20th Annual Conference spent a long time defining value in cancer care and how it can be incorporated into healthcare decision making.