The many regulatory, reimbursement and policy changes related to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act are undoubtedly changing the business climate for physicians. In a feature with video, the New York Times contrasts the practices of two Kentucky primary care doctors — Sven Jonsson, M.D., and Tracy Ragland, M.D. — to illustrate the economic pressure pushing many sole practitioners into employment by large health care networks.

Shopping for health care based on price is still fairly rare and exceedingly difficult to do. However, the Wall Street Journal reports that the push toward price transparency is growing despite the barriers.

The New York Times Sunday Review notes that the health care sector has "repeatedly helped to pull the economy from recession in recent decades." However, in this recession's recovery, the health care sector has not been of much help. Health care spending is growing more slowly than the economy and health care employment is also lagging.

February 5, 2014, South Bend, Indiana – Press Ganey, the leading patient experience improvement firm, today announced that its Quality PerformerSM Hospital eMeasures 1.3 solution has been certified for use by eligible hospitals to meet Meaningful Use Stage 2 Clinical Quality eMeasures reporting requirements as of December 5, 2013. Certified as an EHR Module under the Drummond Group’s Electronic Health Records Office of the National Coordinator Authorized Certification Body (ONC-ACB) program, this solution is compliant in accordance with the criteria adopted by the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

GNS Healthcare, a leading provider of big data analytics products and services in healthcare, today announced the completion of a $10M Series B financing. Cambia Health Solutions, a Series A investor, was joined in the round by two additional strategic investors: California's Heritage Provider Network, and Mitsui & Co. (U.S.A.), Inc. ("Mitsui USA"). This round of financing will be used to expand GNS Healthcare's successful data analytics business across the healthcare industry.

The strength of Cigna's (NYSE: CI) chronic condition support programs has been recognized by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), a private, non-profit organization dedicated to improving health care quality. Cigna has received NCQA Patient and Practitioner Oriented Disease Management (DM) Accreditation for asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, congestive heart failure, coronary artery disease, depression, and diabetes.

Inovalon, Inc., a leading provider of data-driven healthcare solutions, today announced that Greenway Medical Technologies, Inc. has entered into a multi-year engagement that enables Inovalon's advanced healthcare data analytics for payers and providers to leverage Greenway's PrimeSUITE electronic health record (EHR) platform, further enabling improvements in clinical and quality outcomes, and financial performance.

Healthcare organizations have large amounts of data but often do not have the tools to bring the data together for useful business information and planning. Healthcare analytics is the systematic use of data and related business insights developed through applied analytical disciplines such as, statistical, contextual, quantitative, predictive, cognitive, other including emerging model to drive fact-based decision making for planning, management, measurement and learning. Analytics may be descriptive, predictive or prescriptive.