How Confusing Financial Journeys Undermine Revenue and Trust

For many patients, paying a medical bill feels like being pulled in multiple directions at once. The payment portal says “log in and self-serve.” The paper statement points toward “mail a check.” Multiple outbound reminders tell them to call the billing office. By the third or fourth conflicting instruction, most people stop trying to follow […]

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Florida State University set to acquire Tallahassee hospital

The sale of Tallahassee (Fla.) Memorial HealthCare from the city to Florida State University was approved by the university’s board of trustees, with the Florida Board of Governors following suit shortly after, the Tallahassee Democrat reported March 26. Four things to know: 1. The March 26 approvals pave the way to convert the city-owned hospital […]

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Hidden OR capacity challenges: 8 perioperative leaders on what’s draining surgical time

The operating room is one of the most resource-intensive environments in healthcare — and one of the most quietly underutilized. Late starts, turnover creep, misaligned block schedules, behavioral inefficiencies, and bottlenecks upstream and downstream of the OR itself can collectively cost a health system hours of productive surgical time. The challenge is not always visible, […]

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Give and Take: Federal Rural Health Funding Could Trigger Service Cuts

BIG SANDY, Mont. — The emergency department at Big Sandy Medical Center is one room with a single curtain between two beds. It’s one of the many parts of the 25-bed rural hospital that need updating, former CEO Ron Wiens said. He said the hospital, an essential service in its namesake town of nearly 800 […]

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Trump Team Claims Successes Against ACA Fraud While Pushing for More Controls

Complaints about enrollment fraud in Affordable Care Act health insurance coverage have bedeviled the federal marketplace for years. Now, the Trump administration is claiming wins in reducing the problem while simultaneously saying more controls are needed. It has proposed a sweeping set of ACA regulations for next year, including stepped-up requirements for some applicants to […]

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How the Trump Administration Uses Migrant Kids To Find and Detain Family Members

The Trump administration is using migrant children held by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement to lure parents and relatives into immigration detention, whether or not they have a criminal record.  In one example, a dad went to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in New Mexico, thinking he was […]

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Trump administration targets medical school admissions: 4 notes

The Trump administration is expanding its civil rights crackdown on university diversity practices, launching new investigations into medical school admissions at Stanford (Calif.) University, Columbus-based Ohio State University and the University of California San Diego. The Justice Department is demanding seven years of applicant data from the three schools, including test scores, ZIP codes, legacy […]

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Advocate plans largest US hospital drone delivery network

Charlotte, N.C.-based Advocate Health will soon operate the largest hospital-based drone delivery network in the U.S. The health system is partnering with medical drone startup Zipline to transport prescriptions, lab samples and medical supplies across three markets. Medications and supplies will be delivered to patients’ homes, while lab specimens will be transported between hospitals and […]

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Wearables data predicts patient engagement: Mayo Clinic study

Sleep data from COPD patients with wearable devices may help predict how likely they are to stay engaged with pulmonary rehabilitation, according to researchers at Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic. The study, published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings: Digital Health, evaluated whether sleep metrics collected from wrist-worn devices could improve machine learning models predicting participation in a […]

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