Morning Headlines 1/19/16

Privacy experts say Coburn op-ed misses the mark

Privacy experts respond critically to an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal last week by former Senator Tom Colburn, MD’s in which he argues that “HIPAA makes it difficult for researchers to tap into large caches of clinical and genomic data shared across multiple institutions or firms, and then share their findings more broadly.”

50 hospitals charge uninsured more than 10 times cost of care, study finds

A Health Affairs study analyzing Medicare-certified hospital data from 2012 and 2013 finds that 46 of the 50 hospitals with the highest overall markup on care delivered to out-of-network or uninsured patients are members of for-profit health systems, and that 20 of 50 operate in Florida.

Cerner again teams up with KC-area startup

Cerner partners with local Kansas City startup Infusion Express, an outpatient IV therapy company, to reduce IV treatment costs among its employees and reduce absenteeism by a forecasted 5,000 hours annually.