The transition to bundled health care payments remains several years away, with certain obstacles impeding progress in that direction, reveals a study by non-profit research organization Rand Corp.

The nomination of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Principal Deputy Marilyn Tavenner to lead the agency is garnering support among health care industry stakeholders.

The American College of Radiology (ACR) is asking imaging stakeholders attending this week’s Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) meeting in Chicago to urge members of Congress to support the Diagnostic Imaging Services Protection Act (H.R. 3269).

The Obama administration announced Wednesday the resignation of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Donald Berwick, MD. Berwick’s last day will be Friday, December 2, and his principal deputy administrator, Marilyn Tavenner, will serve as interim administrator until the Senate votes to make her appointment permanent.

Harvard Medical School’s Center for Biomedical Informatics (CBI) and health care benefits heavy-hitter Aetna have announced plans to initiate a research collaborative aimed at enhancing the quality and cost of health care. Researchers participating in the endeavor will employ bioinformatics to analyze health care data in new ways.

AHRA: The Association for Medical Imaging Management has approved the formation of an online data, analytics, and benchmarking tool in collaboration with radiology services and solutions provider Regents Health Resources, Inc., Franklin, Tennessee. The product will be developed with input from AHRA member facilities and will utilize Regents'

The failure of the Congressional supercommittee to reach a compromise on spending cuts has positive and negative implications for the radiology sector and the health care community in general.

In its first such move under its new powers to review health insurance increases that exceed 10%, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) yesterday asked Everence Insurance to reduce its proposed premium increases to 5,000 patients in Pennsylvania.