Cerner has completed the acquisition of Siemens AG’s health information technology business unit, Siemens Health Services, for $1.3 billion in cash. The acquisition was announced last August, received regulatory clearance in September, and was completed yesterday.

With the release of the ONC Roadmap on Interoperability last week, as well as the announcement from the HHS Secretary, Sylvia Burwell, on the department’s vision for an accelerated shift to value-based reimbursement, it seems like healthcare leadership in the U.S. is on a focused, and coordinated path toward continued healthcare transformation in 2015 and beyond.

In an announcement from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Secretary Sylvia Burwell, made a significant announcement regarding Medicare’s planned shift to value-based reimbursement in healthcare.

“My message for New Yorkers is prepare for something worse than we have ever seen before,” warned Mayor Bill de Blasio on Jan. 25. Two days later, a New York Times headline nailed the rest of the story of Winter Storm Juno in New York: “Leaders in New York and New Jersey Defend Shutdown for a Blizzard That Wasn’t.” 

A series of reports by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on the state of physician self-referrals demonstrates that self-referral has an “inescapable” effect on increasing Medicare spending and should be viewed as a “call to action," according to a commentary in January 12 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

A special "investigation" from Consumer Reports provides patients with five tactics to deploy prior to receiving a medical test involving ionizing radiation—including assurance that the study will be read by a radiologist.

A major announcement rippled through the healthcare industry today: Sylvia M. Burwell, Secretary of Health and Human Services, introduced plans to accelerate Medicare’s move from fee for service (FFS) toward a value-based reimbursement system.

In a study published in the Journal of the American College of Radiology, David C. Levin, MD, Vijay Rao, MD, and Laurence Parker, PhD, conclude that reimbursement cuts are resulting in a shift of MRI volume from office-based MRI facilities to hospital outpatient settings.