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The latest data from the Human Services Department's Office for Civil Rights show the largest number of healthcare data breaches in a year since regulators started tallying them in 2010. This year's total beat last year's by a single incident. These breaches didn't affect as many patients as the worst year on record. Nealy 43 million patients' data were compromised in 2021, fewer than half the number recorded in 2015, when bad actors accessed confidential information on 112.5 million people. This year did see more data breaches than the previous two years, however. (Kim Cohen, 12/17)

Hospitals serving the highest-need areas and unserved populations will get priority for new Medicare-funded residency slots, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said in a long-awaited final rule published Friday. The additional spots will be phased in over five years, and funding will total roughly $1.8 billion over the next 10 years. The first 200 slots will be announced Jan. 31, 2023. The policy is part of CMS' final inpatient prospective payment system for 2022. (Goldman, 12/17)

Physician pay increased as the labor market tightened, although the pay bump isn't expected to slow the wave of doctors retiring or leaving the field, according survey results published Thursday. Doctors' average pay increased 3.8% in 2021, up from a 1.5% rise in 2020, Doximity found by polling more than 46,000 physicians. But nearly half of respondents indicated they were thinking about leaving the field, on top of the 1% of the workforce who already retired early under the strain of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Kacik, 12/17)

Enterprise software maker Oracle Corp expects to buy electronic medical records company Cerner Corp in an all-cash deal for "mid 90's" per share, a CNBC reporter tweeted on Sunday, citing sources. The deal could be announced Monday morning, according to the tweet. (12/19)

A year after Congress came up with a fix for surprise medical bills, health insurers, hospitals and doctors are still spending millions to tailor the fine print in their favor. The aggressive campaign by health insurers, hospitals, doctors and big employers to influence how the Biden administration interprets the law is playing out through ad campaigns, lobbying efforts and in the courts, amid accusations that each side is profiting from a broken health system. (Wilson, 12/19)

A Dec. 8 search of “medical bills Connecticut” on the fundraising website GoFundMe generated more than 200 fundraisers. Among them, $24,782 was raised for pancreatic cancer treatment for a patient at Hartford Hospital, $15,035 for a patient with neuroblastoma at the Masonic Healthcare Center in Wallingford, and $9,700 raised for a 9-year-old who was treated at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center for a tumor. In addition to cancer treatment, people raised funds for reasons ranging from help with medical bills after a road accident to purchasing a therapy robot for a child. (Srinivasan, 12/18)

The email to the health care workers was like something out of “The Wolf of Wall Street.” “We are in the last few days of the month and are only 217 appointments away from meeting our budget,” the August 2020 memo stated. “Don’t forget the August bonus incentive for all patients scheduled in August! That’s the easiest money you can make. Get that money!!”The “Get that money!!” entreaty wasn’t addressed to a bunch of hard-charging, coke-snorting stockbrokers. It went to Michigan-based employees of Pinnacle Dermatology, a private equity-owned group of 90 dermatology practices across America. (Morgenson, 12/20)