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November 15, 2011 -- The Department of Consumer and Business Services (DCBS) announced today Insurance Division Administrator Teresa Miller has accepted a position with the federal agency charged with implementing many of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, including the development of health insurance exchanges.

November 10, 2011 – When state regulators approved a 12.8 percent rate increase for Regence BlueCross BlueShield earlier this year, they were aware that the insurer had dipped into its surplus account and given a $56 million dividend to its holding company just five months earlier.

November 10, 2011—A wide variety of organizations representing Central Oregon’s healthcare community were talking about creating a coordinated model of providing health care before the Legislature even began thinking about it.

November 10, 2011—Dr. Bruce Goldberg is in active discussions with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to see if federal funds are available to jump start the coordinated care organizations (CCOs) which will provide physical, mental health and dental services to more than 630,000 people on the Oregon Health Plan next July.

November 10, 2011 – Developing a strategic plan to recruit and retain primary care providers is at the essence of a workgroup led by Dr. Lisa Dodson, director of the Oregon Area Health Education Center, which met recently.

November 10, 2011 -- The days of selling a private dental practice in rural Oregon are coming to an end, in part, because of the overwhelming debt faced by new graduates. Dr. Gary Brooks knows that well. In the past ten years, he’s been approached by only three dentists interested in buying his practice, and none of them came back with an actual offer. “With the amount of loans new dentists come out of school with, they can’t afford to buy a practice,” said Brooks, who’s been practicing in Willamina since 1975.

November 10, 2011 -- It took Jennifer Wieczorek, a 2008 graduate of Linfield College's nursing program, a year and a half to find a job using her degree – and she was the last person in her cohort to do so. While in school, Wierczorek had a verbal agreement with Legacy Good Samaritan that she’d work there as an operating room nurse upon graduation. But it took longer than expected to pass her board certification exams, and by the time she did, Legacy didn't have a position for her anymore.

November 8, 2011 — As a special project for Medicare, Acumentra Health will assist Oregon physician practices in electronically reporting adult immunization data to Oregon’s statewide immunization registry, the ALERT Immunization Information System (IIS).