Morning Headlines 8/27/15

CVS Health to Partner with Direct-to-Consumer Telehealth Providers to Increase Access to Physician Care

CVS announces that it will partner with three national telehealth vendors, American Well, Teladoc, and Doctor on Demand to offer remote visits to patients and to connect its MinuteClinic providers with specialists available for real-time consults.

Fusing Randomized Trials With Big Data: The Key to Self-learning Health Care Systems?

A JAMA article proposes that randomized control trials be fully embedded in EHRs, including functionality to support identifying trial participants, facilitating enrollment, and randomly assigning a treatment.

Recommendations for a National Medical Device Evaluation System

An FDA workgroup tasked with evaluating the agencies approach to post-market surveillance of medical devices publishes a final report recommending that a national, integrated network of registries be established, wherein each registry would be tasked with gathering post-market data about a certain device.

Medicare ACOs Provide Improved Care While Slowing Cost Growth in 2014

CMS publishes ACO performance data for 2014: total Shared Savings Program savings remained flat at $804 million, while Pioneer ACO savings climbed 24 percent to $120 million.