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A roundup of top healthcare news stories: January 30, 2017.

A retrospective analysis of evidence from prescription data gathered in Belgium and Italy has found that uncontrolled diabetes might be an early sign of pancreatic cancer.

A review of 2013 cancer statistics in the United States by the CDC showed that 67% of people survived at least 5 years after their cancer diagnosis.

The collaboration between Purdue Pharma and the Virginia Department of Health comes about 2 months after Governor Terry McAuliffe declared the state’s opioid addiction crisis a public health emergency.

A recent survey of consumers found that 1 in 5 were willing to switch from their current primary care physician to one that offered telehealth visits. Researchers noted a particular interest among the survey respondents in using telehealth to manage a chronic illness or get a prescription refilled.

CMS has tried to improve patient experience by tying payments to performance as part of the Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) program; however, a paper published in Health Affairs found no evidence that the program has had a beneficial effect.

The VBP program contains a variety of measures used to determine payment increases or penalties as shown below.

Interviews with 13 insurers showed that uncertainty over the future of the individual insurance market would do the most harm, even if the Affordable Care Act repeal is delayed.

This week, the top managed care stories included Aetna and Humana's merger getting blocked, the first Affordable Care Act replacement proposal was unveiled, and an analysis of regional cancer death trends.

Patients who have had at least 1 prior therapy or carry a 17p deletion or TP53 mutation are now eligible to be treated with ibrutinib (Imbruvica) in the United Kingdom.

More Americans trust the healthcare industry with their data than trust the government. But with a sharp rise in healthcare data breaches in 2016, there are steps that providers and the public should take to be safe.

Coverage of our peer-reviewed research in the healthcare and mainstream press.

The researchers used 2 well-known national data sets to track a cohort of patients and found that death rates from diabetes are closer to 12%, not the 3% to 4% recorded on death certificates.

A roundup of top healthcare news stories: January 27, 2017.

Senator Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, provides his plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, which includes expanding the use of health savings accounts and allowing health insurance to be sold and purchased across state lines.

“Off-the-shelf” chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cells, also known as universal donor cells, were used in 2 young infants with relapsed, refractory acute lymphoblastic leukemia resulted in molecular remission in 28 days in both infants.

A pair of commentaries published in the New England Journal of Medicine explored the popularity of the Affordable Care Act among both US physicians and residents of red states that have expanded Medicaid. Legislators preparing to repeal the law will need to contend with the widespread support for some of its components, even in unexpected regions of the nation.

Davita, the largest dialysis provider in the country, said the matter is not resolved and urged the Trump administration to take action.

A roundup of top healthcare news stories: January 26, 2017.

Researchers from the Peter O’Donnell Jr. Brain Institute and Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Texas Southwestern may have found the ultimate drivers of glioblastoma cell proliferation.

Expansion of Medicaid coverage prior to the authorization of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010 reduced the uninsured rate in New York State, but did not improve access to cancer surgery.

The Council for Affordable Quality Health Committee on Operating Rules for Information Exchange is making great strides in certifying health plans for implementing electronic information exchange between payers and providers. The good news for providers is that very little is required of them to reap the benefits of these certification efforts.

In a commentary, Leavitt argues that the fee-for-service system that built up around Medicare was centered on providers, not patients.

An analysis of cancer death records across the country, by researchers at the University of Washington, has identified clusters of counties that had a particularly high rate of mortality depending on the cancer type.

A study of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) treated at a Veterans Administration hospital in New York found an unexpected relationship: the veterans who were undertreated according to treatment guidelines had lower rates of COPD exacerbation events.

Too often, experts say, fear of hypoglycemia causes those with T1D to forgo exercise, despite the benefits.

A roundup of top healthcare news stories: January 25, 2017.

When analyzing the effect of workplace wellness and related employee health services, studies invariable attribute savings among participants to the program rather than the more likely

While the Congressional Research Service calls for delaying new bundled payment rules, a webinar to explain them is still on CMS' website.

The study found that exam questions dealt more with complications of obesity, rather than basic diagnosis and treatment.