Morning Headlines 6/17/15

CMS Internal Controls Did Not Effectively Ensure The Accuracy Of Aggregate Financial Assistance Payments Made To Qualified Health Plan Insurers Under the Affordable Care Act

An OIG report finds that CMS paid subsidies on behalf of Healthcare.gov and state insurance exchange customers without verifying that payments were made on behalf of confirmed enrollees or verifying that payments were made in the correct amounts.

What makes an EHR “open” or interoperable?

AMIA proposes an objective definition of EHR interoperability that calls on vendors to support data extraction, medical record transmission with structured data elements, exchanging records via record locator service queries, supporting migrations to another vendor by moving existing records to another EHR, and providing APIs that allow third-party apps to access and write to the EHR.

Bethesda health tech company raises $30 million

Bethesda, MD-based digital health startup Aledade raises a $30 million Series B to expand its ACO transition support firm. The company was founded by Farzad Mostashari, MD, former national coordinator for health IT, shortly after he left ONC.

CVS to Buy Target’s Pharmacy Business for $1.9 Billion

CVS acquires Target’s pharmacy business, which includes 1,700 pharmacies within Target stores, for $1.9 billion.