Michael Frank has worked for health insurance companies for decades, doing the actuarial science which determines how much people should pay in monthly premiums. He knows insurers are supposed to be his “advocate” to restrain costs and get him a fair rate—so he was shocked when Aetna agreed to pay $70,000 to NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City for his partial hip replacement.

An initiative to boost Scotland’s radiologist count by at least 10 percent in the midst of a national shortage “has failed,” The Herald Scotland reported, leaving cancer patients across the country without access to potentially life-saving treatments.

Patients who are nonwhite and less educated value patient portals to view clinician notes more than white and educated patients, according to a study published May 24 in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.

Lead author Seth Seabury, PhD, from the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, and colleagues determined that there are "significant gaps in follow-up for patients with mTBI after hospital discharge, even those with a positive finding on CT or who continue to experience post concussive symptoms."

Less than a month after British Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced that up to 270 women may have died of breast cancer after a technical error neglected to send 450,000 invites for final routine mammograms, one doctor is warning the number of failed invites may have been closer to 500,000, The Independent reports.

Pfizer gave more than $10 million to a charity for heart patients while dramatically increasing the price of one of its antiarrhythmic drugs, deflecting costs from patients and leaving Medicare with a bigger bill, the U.S. Justice Department said in a May 24 settlement statement.

CMS had requested comments on allowing direct provider contracting (DPC) with Medicare beneficiaries in the form of the alternative payment model. Among major healthcare groups, the response was decidedly mixed, ranging from cautious optimism to telling CMS to focus on other payment reforms.

Nearly one-third of integrated interventional radiology residency programs lack a web presence, researchers reported in the American Journal of Roentgenology this month—and they could be missing out on recruiting the next generation of radiologists.