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And this point in patients’ recovery — when they’ve been discharged and have to sink or swim on their own — is the stage that everyone in the health system is paying special attention to right now. For too long, too many people like John Iovine would take a dive at this stage and end up back in the hospital again. The industry calls these returns to the hospital preventable readmissions, and they are a huge drain on finances, costing Medicare alone $15 billion annually. That’s why Medicare launched an initiative a few years ago that penalizes hospitals that see too many patients readmitted too soon. And in turn, that spurred many hospitals to pay more attention to the problem. (Bookman, 6/8)

In the privacy of a doctor's office, a patient can ask any question and have it be covered under doctor-patient confidentiality. But what happens when patients want to search possible symptoms of a disease or ailment online? It's common to search for treatments for a migraine or stomach pain on WebMD, or a flu strain on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website. But there's no way to know who else may be privy to that search information. So where does that data go when a patient presses enter? (6/8)

A researcher says a line of IV drug pumps can be remotely hacked to deliver an incorrect, and possibly fatal, dosage of drugs to patients. Security researcher Billy Rios told Wired that a range of pumps from manufacturer Hospira, including one line that the company stopped selling in 2013, include a flaw that allows someone to alter the device’s software to change the dosage. (McCabe, 6/8)