With healthcare costs continuing to rise, hospitals, payers, and patients are looking for different venues for care and ways to cut costs while maintaining quality and safety. As more surgical procedures are safely performed in outpatient settings, more ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) are being built or restructured. Partnerships between hospitals…
Editor's Note The Biden Administration on March 2 released a National Cybersecurity Strategy that includes a comprehensive approach to accomplish the following: “strengthen collaboration with stakeholders to defend critical infrastructure; disrupt and dismantle threat actors; shape market forces to drive security and resilience; invest in a resilient future; and forge…
Editor's Note According to Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2022 ended on a high note as far as healthcare employment trends go, with December reflecting 16,687,700 employed workers—up 54,700 from November—and a rise of 15,700 in hospital jobs. Overall healthcare job growth in 2022 averaged 49,000 jobs each month, compared with…
Editor's Note Intermountain Healthcare in Utah is the first health system in the state to use a new artificial intelligence (AI) tool distributed by Medtronic that helps doctors detect colorectal polyps in real time during a colonoscopy, a GlobeNewswire press release reports on November 11. The new AI technology is…
Editor's Note The American Heart Association and Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General) have partnered to create and launch a new digital health app for frontline workers, according to an Association Press release published on November 9. The Association’s Adult Cardiac Life Support app offers access to key resources, such as algorithms for…
Editor's Note The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), through the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program, evaluated more than 2 years of readmission cases for Medicare patients and penalized 2,273 hospitals, Kaiser Health News November 1 reports. This is the lowest number of penalties since 2014. The Hospital Readmissions Reduction…
Editor's Note A new report was released by the American Hospital Association (AHA) highlighting numerous causes that resulted in 136 rural hospitals closing from 2010 to 2021, including 19 closures in 2020, AHA September 8 reports. These closures can be attributed to longstanding pressures, including low reimbursement, staffing shortages, low…
Editor's Note US News & World Report on July 26 posted its 2022-2023 Best Hospitals rankings, highlighting the top 20 hospitals named to its Honor Roll for delivering exceptional care across many specialties. For the seventh consecutive year, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, ranked number one. Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles,…