Premier, the large hospital group purchasing organization, has acquired Memdata, which aids hospitals in construction and capital equipment purchasing.
The Wall Street Journal has the first of what undoubtedly will be many analyses of what Medicare pays to physicians, finding that a few specialists receive astounding amounts of Medicare payments. About 1% of doctors receive 14% of all payments and a number receive multi-millions a year from the program.
The HHS Office of Inspector General issued a report finding that CMS did not do a good job of detecting inappropriate coding on visits to hospital outpatient clinics.
According to an article in the Fiscal Times based on a Morgan Stanley survey of brokers, small group and individual health insurance policies sold outside the insurance exchanges are seeing the largest premium increases in the history of the survey.
Sheridan Healthcare, a physician staffing company in areas like radiology and anesthesiology, apparently intends to file for an initial public offering.
Wellframe, which intends to help people be "engaged in personalized care plans" has raised a $1.5 million seed round. Gag me if I hear about one more mobile health app to help consumers.
After reconsideration, and a relentless lobbying campaign from health plans, CMS is giving Medicare Advantage insurers a .4% reimbursement increase as opposed to the initially proposed 1.9% cut. We are all for MA, but wonder if CMS intended this all along, is just caving in to political pressure or what is going on.
General Electric has acquired Canadian software firm CHCA Computer Systems, which makes operating room-related software, to add to its collection of health care information technology.
In a complicated transaction that appears to relieve some of the burden of supporting its financially struggling company-based clinic business, Walgreens has sold a majority interest in its TakeCare clinics to private equity firm Water Street, while Water Street was also buying a majority interest in the CHS employer worksite clinic business. Water Street intends to merge the two entities, which will have about 500 clinics.
IMS Health Holdings had a successful initial public offering, returning to the public markets with a 15% gain over the offering price of $20 per share.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=IMS&ql=1
Apr072014
Private equity firm Cinven has finalized its acquisition of clinical research company Medpace for almost a billion dollars.
The Healthy Skeptic is a website about the health care system, and is written by Kevin Roche, who has many years of experience working in the health industry. Mr. Roche is available to assist health care companies through consulting arrangements through Roche Consulting, LLC and may be reached at khroche@healthy-skeptic.com.