Morning Headlines 11/13/13

Joint Center for Cancer Precision Medicine established

In Boston, Dana Farber, Brigham and Women’s, Boston Children’s Hospital, and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have announced a collaborative partnership that will pursue advances in cancer genetics to create “precision medicine treatment pathways” for patients with advanced cancers.

WESTMED Accountable Care Collaboration with UnitedHealthcare and Optum Yields Significant Health Improvements

White Plains NY-based WESTMED Medical Group reports that its year-old ACO has led to improvements in nine of 10 health quality metrics, increased patient satisfaction, and reduced health care costs.

First Estimate On Insurance Sign-Ups Is Pretty Darned Small

Fewer than 50,000 people signed up for health insurance through Healthcare.gov during the month of October, according to the Wall Street Journal. The administration had been targeting 500,000 for October, but the site launch was plagued with technical issues.

CMS Reconsiders ‘End-to-End’ ICD-10 Testing

CMS is reconsidering its earlier decision to forego end-to-end ICD-10 testing with physician’s offices, claiming at the time that it was confident that its own internal testing was sufficient. The change in tone comes in response to growing public concern about its testing of Healthcare.gov.

DrFirst Launches New Tool to Alert Doctors to At-Risk Patients and Identify Patient Medication Adherence Rates

DrFirst has enhanced its e-prescribing routine to present physicians with prescription fill rates and unfilled prescription alerts for patients at the point of prescription writing. The information will used to help physicians gauge medication adherence. It will be available either on DrFirst’s own e-prescribing system or within an EHR system that uses it.