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Facing heavy bipartisan opposition on Capitol Hill as well as from patient groups, businesses, insurers and others, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said Monday it did not plan to move ahead at this time with several proposed changes to the Medicare prescription drug program.

The House Ways and Means bill to temporarily prevent Medicare physician payment cuts also would deliver an Easter gift to hospitals-a six-month extension to comply with a controversial new inpatient payment rule for hospitals.

The bundled payment model encourages health systems to provide high quality, better-coordinated care at a lower cost for Medicare beneficiaries. It's no wonder, then, why the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) has developed a colonoscopy bundled payment model to help gastroenterologists achieve value-based health outcomes.

Another temporary 12-month patch will be enacted for the doc fix prior to the scheduled March 31 expiration of the current patch, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) indicated Wednesday.

With a new study of Independence Blue Cross members, evidence on the effectiveness of the patient-centered medical home is swinging back towards the positive.

With less than a week remaining to sign up for private health insurance under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, more than half of the uninsured don't know that March 31 is the deadline.

Pfizer Inc's Xalkori delayed progression of lung cancer longer than chemotherapy in patients who had never previously been treated for the disease, according to results of a late-stage study released on March 25.

Biomedical engineers in Germany have developed a tool that uses magnetic beads to detect proteins, potential biomarker, in blood or urine samples in a one-step process.

Scientists from Weill Cornell Medical College and Houston Methodist have found that a gene previously unassociated with breast cancer plays a pivotal role in the growth and progression of the triple negative form of the disease, a particularly deadly strain that often has few treatment options.

Patients covered by exchange-based insurance are more likely than those in employer-sponsored plans to face utilization management controls-such as prior authorization and step therapy-in filling their prescriptions, a report Monday from healthcare consultancy Avalere Health contends.

New rules for Medicare Advantage (MA) plans would protect elderly citizens who might otherwise lose access to their preferred network of doctors.

Patients want physicians to provide high-quality care and the health system requires good value for physician work. To help gastroenterologists achieve these goals, the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) has developed a colonoscopy bundled payment model.

The AURELIA trial comparing the efficacy of bevacizumab plus chemotherapy, versus chemotherapy alone, presented encouraging results in platinum-resistant ovarian cancer patients.

The prospects for a permanent doc fix prior to the March 31 deadline are looking increasingly remote.

Some health systems are moving beyond surgery in serving back pain patients.

If mobile medical devices had greater interoperability, which means they could better communicate with each other, the nation could avoid more than $30 billion a year in wasteful healthcare spending.

Myriad Genetics, Inc. today announced that Tesaro, Inc. will use Myriad's novel HRD (homologous recombination deficiency) test to identify tumor types that may respond to its investigational poly-ADP ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitor, niraparib, currently in Phase 3 clinical development.

A retrospective study has shown that two targeted therapy drugs achieved similar outcomes among people with metastatic or recurrent non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) harboring an EGFR mutation.

The Food and Drug Administration is weighing the benefits and risks of two experimental colon cancer screening tests which use DNA from a patient's stool to detect dangerous tumors and growths.

Providers seeking to treat patients using telemedicine will be required to deliver the same standard of care as they would if they were treating them in person, at least according to a proposal from The Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB). In fact, these new telemedicine policy guidelines intend to solidify patients' welfare.

Figures from 2010 show that 71 Chicago-area hospitals covering seven counties discharged about 1.02 million patients; by 2012, that number had dropped about 5 percent, to 970,000 discharges, according to the January report.

A new tier of coverage should be added to the health law's online marketplaces, or exchanges, that would be less comprehensive than what plans are now required to offer, the head of the health insurance industry's trade group said Sunday.

States with broader Medicaid coverage have lower incidences of kidney failure and smaller insurance-related gaps in access to kidney disease care.

The Federation of State Medical Boards will vote next month on a new telemedicine policy that codifies that medical care takes place where a patient, not a provider, is located.

Despite ACA stipulations, patients with cancer may face new barriers to care as they shop for healthcare plans on the state and federal insurance exchanges.

Emergency department usage in Massachusetts rose slightly both during and immediately after implementation of a 2006 state law expanding health care access, a sign that broader availability of insurance may increase use of the ED.

As Congress tries to reform Medicare, the program's independent advisor has its own suggestions, including a call to end to what has become a revenue buffer for many hospitals and an integral part of their physician acquisition strategies.

Team collaboration and coordination will be necessary if health systems are to become more accountable for patient-centered outcomes. In particular, frontline healthcare workers have been identified as having the most critical role in engaging with patients.

Nebraska legislators spent the past year crafting a conservative version of Obamacare's Medicaid expansion that they hoped would gain support in a pretty red state. But after a failed vote in the state legislature Wednesday, the Medicaid expansion is officially dead in Nebraska this year.

More than half of adults between ages 40 and 75 who need help managing cholesterol would be eligible for statin therapy for the prevention of heart disease on the basis of the newest American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association guidelines, finds an analysis published Wednesday.