News From Around the Web
> The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has released the schedule for enhancements to Cypress, the electronic clinical quality measure testing tool. Version 2.6 will be released Jan. 22 and version 2.7 will be released in the summer of 2015. The Quality Reporting Document Architecture enhancements will be released in April 2015. Website
> The electronic medical records of many current and former United States Postal Service workers were compromised by a cyberattack, Nextgov reports. Employees affected were those who had applied for workers compensation benefits; both health information and social security numbers were breached. Almost 500,000 individuals are affected by the security incident. Article
Health Finance News
> Prime Healthcare Services, the Southern California-based, for-profit chain that has generated much controversy in recent years for its business practices, is making a bid to acquire six hospitals operated by the Catholic Daughters of Charity healthcare system. The bid by Prime is unusual in that the system had been rebuffed twice by California Attorney General Kamala Harris to acquire other properties, although she and predecessors have approved a couple of other deals. Article
Health Insurance News
> Six states have voiced their support for the plaintiffs in the upcoming King v. Burwell Supreme Court case. At issue in the case, which the Court will hear on March 4, are the tax subsidies paid to customers who sign up for health insurance on the federal marketplace. Article
> With Republicans now in charge of the House and Senate, their first order of business is to slowly chip away at the Affordable Care Act by targeting the employer mandate. A new bill would increase the full-time 30-hour work week to 40 hours. However, this plan may backfire. Article
And Finally... No wonder so many American college graduates are unprepared for the real world. Article