Laura Joszt, MA

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.

When the first National Comprehensive Cancer Network Guidelines were developed 20 years ago, even the participating members who were there at the beginning were skeptical they would be able to come to an agreement and build something lasting.

During his keynote speech at the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN)'s 20th Annual Conference, Chief Executive Officer Robert Carlson, MD, spent the majority of his time discussing the NCCN Guidelines because they are the core of its services.

Although HHS Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell touted the success of this past open enrollment period and the affordability of quality health plans, she declined to comment on King v. Burwell during her keynote speech at America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP)'s National Health Policy Conference.

A novel costing strategy has been used to determine the cost of care across the entire care process for benign prostate hyperplasia, according to researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles.

A discussion on the Supreme Court oral arguments for King v. Burwell got very heated as America's Health Insurance Plans kicked off its National Health Policy Conference in Washington, DC, on March 11.

CMS announced the Next Generation Accountable Care Organization Model, which takes on greater performance risk but could potentially reap greater rewards.

Young adults appear to have changed their use of the emergency department since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act to reflect a more efficient use of medical care, according to a new report in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.

Within 5 years of a breast cancer diagnosis, patients are at an increased risk of developing thyroid cancer, according to a new study, which was presented at the Endocrine Society's 97th annual meeting.

Just 2 therapy classes are responsible for more than half of the increase in overall prescription drug spending in the United States, reported Express Scripts.

Oregon Gov Kate Brown signed a bill shutting down the troubled, and expensive, state health insurance exchange, Cover Oregon.

Despite the measles outbreak resulting from the anti-vaccination movement in the United States, the percent of Americans who said it's "extremely important" to get children vaccinated continued to fall, according to a new Gallup poll.