Bernie Monegain

Outsourcing company Cognizant, which provides healthcare technology services to providers and payers, will buy health IT software company TriZetto for $2.7 billion in cash, with the intent to better position itself in the market and take advantage of changes taking place in the sector.

DuBois Regional Medical Center in DuBois, Pa. was first to attest to Stage 2 of meaningful use among a handful of hospitals that attested early. Though more hospitals have attested to date, the number could still be counted on a couple sets of hands.

CMS and ONC disappointed many CIOs and IT teams around the country on Aug. 29 when it issued a final rule for Stage 2 meaningful use that lacked the flexibility on reporting that so many had counted on -- and perhaps expected, because what they had proposed seemed like a reasonable compromise to them.

ONC and HHS issued a final rule today that they say will give EHR makers, health IT developers, providers and consumers more flexibility and clarity when it comes to 2014 Edition certification criteria.

PwC US announced on Friday it would put in a bid for the Department of Defense EHR contract, proposing an open source system. The PwC team would go head-to-head with IBM and Epic, which are also bidding on the project. Epic is among the most widely adopted EHR systems in the country.

HealthCare.gov, the government's insurance enrollment website, was breached in July by a hacker or hackers, according to CMS officials at a briefing on Thursday. The officials said that while the intruders uploaded malware, they took no personal information.

Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, in Winston-Salem, N.C., has posted losses for the 2013-2014 fiscal year, ending June 30. It's the second year in a row Wake Forest reported millions in losses, apparently unable to bounce back from the hit it took over difficulties with its $280 million rollout of its Epic electronic health record system.

The Department of Homeland Security has gone live with eClinicalWorks' cloud-based electronic health record system at 23 sites across the country.

A startup that plans to take Google Glass to healthcare and other markets has landed $8.4 million in venture capital.

The Department of Health and Human Services published a final rule for Stage 2 meaningful use Aug. 29 offering hospitals and physicians flexibility for 2014 -- but not nearly as much as CHIME and other professional organizations had asked for.