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The nation's second-largest health insurer has agreed to pay the government a record $16 million to settle potential privacy violations in the biggest known health care hack in U.S. history, officials said Monday. The personal information of nearly 79 million people — including names, birthdates, Social Security numbers and medical IDs — was exposed in the cyberattack, discovered by the company in 2015. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 10/15)

Seven companies and four men are facing charges, accused of roles in a $1 billion telemedicine fraud scheme that deceived tens of thousands of patients and more than 100 doctors, federal prosecutors announced Monday. The eastern Tennessee U.S. attorney's office said six Florida companies, a Houston firm and four Florida men are named in a 32-count indictment charging them with conspiracy to commit health care fraud, introducing misbranded drugs into interstate commerce and mail fraud. (10/15)

Tariffs on imported building materials have caused healthcare providers to rethink their construction projects as they look to mitigate higher costs. The Trump administration on Sept. 24 placed a 10% tariff, amounting to $200 billion, on 5,745 items from China, including concrete and lumber. That will rise to 25% in 2019. That's in addition to $50 billion worth of tariffs on Chinese imports that was implemented in August. A 25% levy on steel and 10% on aluminum imported from a handful of countries already kicked in earlier this year. (Kacik, 10/15)

The federal government fed the initial investments in [Electronic Health Records]. Through May 2016, it poured $34.7 billion into incentives for adopting EHRs, money that many health systems went after. As a result, hospitals and health systems spent millions and sometimes billions of dollars each to install new health record-keeping software. A newly live Epic EHR installation at the Mayo Clinic, for instance, made up a chunk of the health system’s overall $1.5 billion investment in new technology. (Arndt, 10/13)