Weekly Roundup: Health care news and notes

February 13, 2015 · NCQA

Every Friday NCQA gives a rundown of some of the health care news stories from the past week. Here are some of our picks for this week:

• The Centers for Disease Control reported that American nonsmokers exposed to secondhand smoke fell to 25 percent in 2012 from 53 percent in 2000. [The New York Times]
• CMS grants broader coverage for HIV screening of all Medicare beneficiaries. [Modern Healthcare]
• As the government sets to extinguish Medicare’s “fee-for-service” system, specialists are looking for new ways to survive. [Bloomberg Business]
• The number of people who survived cancer doubled from 1992-2014. [National Cancer Institute]
• Patients are not shopping around for health insurance because of the lack of price transparency. [Modern Healthcare]
• Two California lawmakers are looking to end “personal belief” vaccination exemption in the wake of the recent measles outbreak. [The Wall Street Journal]
• The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation commits $500 million, over the next ten years, towards decreasing childhood obesity [Robert Wood Johnson Foundation]
• Debate heats up over safety of electronic health records: regulators are pushing EHRs while critics say they are downplaying the risks to patients. [USA Today]
• A new initiative will enable patients to view and add notes to their physicians’ EHRs. [Medical Economics]
• Several parents are pressuring pediatricians to stop treating unvaccinated patients. [NPR]
• More than half of the country’s top hospitals implementing pilot programs of Apple’s HealthKit service. [Reuters]
• New report highlights savings achieved by medical homes. [AAFP]
• Pediatric ACOs attribute cost containment and overall success to value improvement metrics. [MedPage Today]