Wareham (Mass.) Orthopedic Associates has joined Southcoast Physicians Group, a part of the New Bedford, Mass.-based Southcoast Health System, according to The Wareham Courier.

Laxmaiah Manchikanti, MD, and Joshua A. Hirsch, MD, have been published in a special issue of Harvard Health Policy Review on assessing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Anna Jaques Hospital in Newburyport, Mass., has announced that Simon Faynzilberg, MD, will be the medical director of its comprehensive pain center, according to a Newburyport Daily News report.

Massachusetts has successfully launched a statewide health information exchange.

Lyle J. Micheli, MD, director of the division of sports medicine at Children's Hospital Boston, received the 2011 Robert E. Leach Mr. Sports Medicine award during the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine's annual meeting, according to a hospital news release.

William S. Burke, a former executive of South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, Mass., has been sentenced to 366 days in prison for stealing $222,000 from the hospital, according to a report in The Boston Globe.

The U.S. Department of Justice has opened a civil investigation into possible anticompetitive behaviors by Boston-based Partners HealthCare System and issued letters requesting information related to the system's contracting procedures with health insurers to Partners and Massachusetts' three largest insurance companies on Apr. 19, according to a report in The Boston Globe.

A Suffolk County (Mass.) Superior Court judge has ordered insurers Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Fallon Community Health Plan to base premium increases off of 2009 rates, rather than higher figures the plans had hoped to use to determine 2010 rates, according to a report in The Boston Globe.

Young-Ho Oh, MD, an orthopedic surgeon with a subspecialty in sports medicine, has joined the Harrington HealthCare family as part of Harrington Physician Services, based in Southbridge, Mass., according to a Harrington news release.

A new report from the Massachusetts Division of Health Care Finance and Policy found that private spending per member for healthcare was up 15.5 percent from 2006-2008, or 7.5 percent annually. Over 75 percent of this growth occurred in hospital outpatient departments, according to the report.