Oz Says California’s Not Fighting Health Care Fraud, but Data Shows It’s Part of a Larger Battle
CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz has publicly accused California of rampant hospice and home‑health fraud, claiming up to $3.5 billion in Los Angeles County alone and threatening to withhold Medicaid payments. Federal data, however, shows California recovers more than half of all Medicaid fraud recoveries nationwide, ranking fourth in dollars recovered per enrollee and outperforming most states. While hospice fraud is a documented problem in California, CMS clarified that not all billing cited by Oz is presumed improper and that investigations are ongoing. The dispute has escalated into a political clash, with Governor Newsom filing a civil‑rights complaint against Oz and Republican lawmakers joining the criticism of Democratic‑led states.
What Does Evidence-Based Mindfulness Mean in Healthcare?
Healthcare leaders worldwide are increasingly exploring mindfulness to improve staff well‑being and patient care. Oxford Mindfulness emphasizes that evidence‑based approaches, such as Mindfulness‑Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), differ markedly from generic apps or short courses. Robust research shows moderate reductions in...
Root Canal Treatment with Modern Technology: Why It’s Faster and Safer
Modern dental technologies are reshaping root canal treatment, making it faster, safer, and more predictable. Three‑dimensional CBCT imaging delivers precise diagnoses, while dental microscopes reveal hidden canals with unprecedented clarity. Nickel‑titanium rotary instruments and ultrasonic irrigation streamline cleaning and disinfection,...
Report Finds Safety Concerns Top of Mind for Healthcare Workers
A new Canopy report surveying over 1,000 healthcare leaders reveals that more than one‑quarter of workers experience safety incidents daily or weekly, with nearly half facing threatening situations and 20% encountering violence. The study links these safety concerns directly to...
Philips-Nvidia Team-Up Strives to Create a ‘Self-Driving MRI’ Machine
Philips and Nvidia have unveiled an AI‑driven preview that generates a synthetic MRI image before the scan begins, using Philips' MR foundation model combined with Nvidia's NV‑Segment, NV‑Generate, and NV‑Reason tools. The preview ingests patient data and protocol settings to...
FDA Pushes Back Its Review of New PET Imaging Agent From Lantheus
The U.S. FDA has extended its review of Lanteus’ PET imaging agent LNTH‑2501 by three months, moving the PDUFA target date to June 29. LNTH‑2501, a Ga‑68 edotreotide kit for detecting neuroendocrine tumors in adults and children, remains unapproved and...
You Don’t Need to Lose Weight to Reverse Prediabetes, Study Finds
A new Nature Medicine study shows that prediabetes can remit without any weight loss, challenging the long‑standing emphasis on shedding pounds to prevent diabetes. About 25% of participants in lifestyle programs normalized blood glucose despite stable weight, achieving protection comparable...
A More Personal Digital Health Experience for People in Europe
Google is teaming up with DocMorris, one of Europe’s largest online pharmacies, to build an AI‑driven digital health companion. The collaboration leverages Google’s Gemini large‑language models and Google Cloud’s EU‑based infrastructure to offer a personal health guide and conversational pharmacy...
Metformin Reduces Weight Gain in Young People Taking Antipsychotics
A large pragmatic trial involving 1,565 overweight or obese youths with bipolar spectrum disorders found that adding metformin to a brief lifestyle program significantly blunted weight gain associated with second‑generation antipsychotics. Over six months, the metformin group’s BMI rose only...
Caring Senior Service’s CEO Is Tackling Caregiver Shortages, Scaling Growth With AI
CEO Jeff Salter of Caring Senior Service is leveraging AI and new software tools to address caregiver shortages and accelerate growth in 2026. The franchisor, operating over 50 locations in 21 states, is focusing on community referral pipelines, a mindset...
Ozempic Is About to Go Generic in India, China and Canada
Novo Nordisk will lose patent protection for its semaglutide drugs Ozempic and Wegovy in several high‑population markets, allowing generic versions to launch in India, China, Canada, Brazil, Turkey and South Africa. The first generics are expected in India this weekend,...
The $12 Million Medical Fraud That Put Patients At Risk
Dr. Claribel Tan, an Anchorage rheumatologist, received a six‑and‑a‑half‑year federal prison sentence for orchestrating a decade‑long health‑care fraud that generated more than $12.5 million in false insurance claims. Patients were injected with free samples, expired drugs, reduced doses, or entirely different...
Singapore: Digital and AI Powering Smart Healthcare Innovation
Singapore is accelerating digital and AI‑driven healthcare innovation to address its rapidly ageing population and rising chronic disease burden. The government pledged SG$37 billion under the Research, Innovation and Enterprise 2030 plan to fund high‑impact research, digital platforms, and AI adoption. Events...
2026 MAP Awards Presented to 20 Organizations for Revenue Cycle Performance
The Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) announced the 2026 MAP Award winners, recognizing 20 organizations for high‑performance revenue cycle management. Recipients include three integrated delivery systems, eight hospital systems, four individual hospitals, two critical‑access hospitals, and three physician practices. Winners...
CMPs May Fall Short, Policy Brief Urges CMS to Recalibrate Nursing Home Fines
A Rockefeller Institute policy brief finds that most civil money penalties (CMPs) imposed on nursing homes in 2023 were modest, averaging under 0.5% of net patient revenue despite a total $204 million in fines. The analysis of 3,745 facilities shows that...
‘Considerably’ More Complicated: Nursing Homes Reeling From Estimated $1B in Owed Incentive Payments Face Federal, State Policy Shifts
Ohio nursing homes face an estimated $1 billion in overdue quality incentive payments after the state Supreme Court ruled Medicaid miscalculated rates for three consecutive years. The Ohio Department of Medicaid has yet to complete the required recalculation, leaving the exact...
Balancing Efficacy, Equity, and Shared Decision-Making in MS Care: Fred Lublin, MD
In a recent AJMC interview, Dr. Fred Lublin highlighted how high‑efficacy disease‑modifying therapies have shifted multiple sclerosis treatment toward earlier use, raising new questions about therapy sequencing and de‑escalation. He emphasized that patient preference should guide decisions between infusible and...
Prodeon Medical FDA 510(k) Approved for the Urocross Expander System, a Non-Permanent Retrievable Implant for Treating Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia
Prodeon Medical received FDA 510(k) clearance for its Urocross Expander System, a non‑permanent, retrievable implant designed to treat lower urinary tract symptoms caused by benign prostatic hyperplasia. Clinical data from the Expander‑2 randomized trial showed a 48.1% mean improvement in...
Modular Building Accelerates Care Delivery in Rural Locale
Good Samaritan Hospital in Kern County is adding two 6,000‑square‑foot volumetric modular clinics to form the Weedpatch Integrated Wellness Center. The prefabricated structures, built by Plant Prefab using EIR Healthcare’s MedModular platform, will serve roughly 3,500 patients per year with...
The Alzheimer’s Crisis Is Hitting Black And Latino Americans Hardest
By 2030, nearly 40% of U.S. Alzheimer’s patients will be Black or Latino, with Black Americans facing twice the risk and Latino Americans 1.5 times higher than Whites. The disease already ranks among the top causes of death, and projections...
HIMSS26: Optimize Hybrid Infrastructure To Accelerate Healthcare Innovation
At HIMSS26, HealthTech highlighted the critical role of hybrid infrastructure in scaling AI initiatives across healthcare. On‑prem data centers deliver low‑latency inferencing, while the cloud supplies on‑demand compute power for flexible workloads. Leaders emphasized workload placement decisions that prioritize patient...
Report: Cigarette Smoking Rate Drops to Record Low 9.9%
U.S. adult cigarette smoking fell to 9.9% in 2024, the lowest level ever recorded, according to a New England Journal of Medicine analysis of 2023‑2024 National Health Interview Survey data. The decline marks a continuation of a multi‑decade downward trend,...
HIMSS26 Brings Virtual Connections Into the Real World
The HIMSS26 conference highlighted the power of blending virtual platforms with real‑world interactions. Attendees reported that meeting colleagues face‑to‑face deepened relationships and reinforced teamwork focused on patient care. A video from HIMSS TV captured multiple stories illustrating how hybrid networking...
Former Federal Advisers on Autism Who Were Let Go by RFK Jr. Form a New Committee
Former federal autism advisers dismissed by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have launched the Independent Autism Coordinating Committee, a science‑based alternative to the reconstituted Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee. The new group, comprising five former federal members, leading scientists and...
Factual Messaging and Clinician Voices Key to Vaccine Social Media Engagement
A new JAMA Network Open study of 243 California adults shows that vaccine‑related social‑media posts achieve higher engagement when they are factual, sourced from reputable public‑health agencies, and feature clinicians or older adults. Humor dramatically reduces likes, shares and comments,...
Racial Disparities Persist in Curative Treatment for Early-Stage NSCLC Among Medicare Beneficiaries
A new JAMA Network Open study of 28,287 Medicare beneficiaries shows that Black patients with early‑stage non‑small cell lung cancer consistently receive curative treatment at lower rates than White patients. Surgical resection rates for Black patients fell from 52.3% to...
Acute Kidney Injury After TAVR: Key Risk Factors Every Cardiologist Should Know
A meta‑analysis of 10,353 transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) patients found that 21.7% develop acute kidney injury (AKI). The study identified eight independent predictors, including hypertension, coronary artery disease, peripheral vascular disease, prior stroke, chronic kidney disease, elevated serum creatinine,...
Teenage Cannabis Use Linked to 52% Higher Schizophrenia Risk
A new Johns Hopkins study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry analyzed almost 700,000 U.S. medical records and found that adolescents with cannabis use disorder (CUD) face a 52% higher relative risk of developing schizophrenia compared with peers with...
MiniMed Gets FDA Nod for Smaller Insulin Pump
MiniMed, the diabetes‑tech spin‑out of Medtronic, received FDA clearance for its MiniMed Flex insulin pump, a device roughly half the size of the 780G model and operable via smartphone. The pump, featuring a 300‑unit reservoir, targets Type 1 patients aged 7+ and...
New Real-World Evidence Supports the Use of AI in Lung Cancer Screening
A prospective trial of 911 asymptomatic patients undergoing low‑dose chest CT showed that AI‑assisted nodule detection modestly increased interpretation time by about 15 seconds but significantly boosted the identification of Lung‑RADS‑positive nodules. Radiologists using the AI tool reported roughly double...
Echocardiographic Surveillance of AS Doesn’t Measure Up to Guidelines
A real‑world study of 20,571 California patients with aortic stenosis found that echocardiographic surveillance aligned with 2020 ACC/AHA guidelines markedly improves outcomes. Guideline‑concordant monitoring occurred in 74% of mild cases but fell below 50% for severe disease, the group at...
Boosting the Blood-Brain Barrier Could Avert Brain Damage in Athletes
Repeated head impacts in contact sports have been linked to lasting damage of the blood‑brain barrier (BBB), a finding that may underlie chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). Researchers scanned 47 retired athletes using an MRI contrast agent that only enters brain...
COVID Probably Killed 150,000 More People in Its First Two Years than Official U.S. Tolls Show
Researchers using a machine‑learning algorithm estimate that U.S. COVID‑19 deaths in 2020‑2021 were 150,000‑160,000 higher than official CDC counts, raising the total to nearly one million. The study examined 5.7 million adult death records, flagging likely COVID deaths that occurred outside...
Elevate Podcast: Dr. Brian Haas, National Medical Director, Ascend Hospice, and Creator, Hospice Intelligence
In the latest Elevate Podcast, Hospice News interviews Dr. Brian Haas, national medical director of Ascend Hospice and CEO of Wellspring Healthcare. Haas explains how artificial intelligence can both help and hinder clinical documentation in hospice and palliative care. He...
No Major Progress on Making CV Care More Affordable: JACC Stats
The latest JACC statistics issue reveals that the long‑standing decline in cardiovascular mortality has stalled, while total spending on cardiovascular care has more than tripled since 2000. Analysis of privately insured working‑age adults shows inflation‑adjusted healthcare expenditures rose from $4,813...
OCHIN, C3 Partner to Expand ACO Offerings for FQHCs
OCHIN and Community Care Cooperative (C3) have launched a joint accountable care organization (ACO) offering tailored for federally qualified health centers (FQHCs). OCHIN will supply its Epic EHR platform and analytics, while C3 brings a suite of Medicare ACO services,...
FDA Seeks to Encourage Fewer Animal Studies with New Draft Guidance
The FDA released a draft guidance that details how biopharma firms can validate non‑animal approaches for early‑phase toxicology and safety studies. The document encourages the use of in‑vitro assays, computational modeling, and other modern methods to replace traditional animal testing....
Thymus May Be Critical to Adult Health
Harvard-affiliated researchers used AI to evaluate routine CT scans and discovered that a healthy thymus in adults predicts markedly lower mortality, cardiovascular death, and lung cancer risk. The studies, covering over 25,000 participants from a lung‑cancer screening trial and the...
STAT+: Clearing Tumors in Mice, Azalea Therapeutics Advances Dream of in Vivo CAR-T Therapy
Azalea Therapeutics, a spinout from Jennifer Doudna’s lab, reported in Nature that its in vivo CAR‑T approach can generate functional CAR‑T cells directly within mice and eradicate both solid and hematologic tumors. The technique uses infused gene‑editing particles that precisely...
FDA Approves JenaValve TAVR System for Aortic Regurgitation
JenaValve received FDA clearance for its Trilogy Transcatheter Heart Valve System, marking the first TAVR device expressly approved to treat symptomatic, severe aortic regurgitation (AR). The approval follows the ALIGN‑AR trial, which demonstrated the valve’s safety and efficacy in a...
Can AI Help Healthcare Systems Make Sense of Their Data?
At DevSparks 2026, Partex.AI unveiled a sovereign healthcare foundation model that combines federated learning, knowledge graphs, and agentic AI to analyze fragmented medical data without moving patient records. The architecture keeps data on‑site, sharing only encrypted model updates, while knowledge...
Mass General Brigham Health Plan Launches Interactive Wellness Hub
Mass General Brigham Health Plan partnered with mPulse to launch an interactive wellness hub for commercial, Medicare Advantage, Medicaid and dual‑eligible members. The platform uses predictive analytics to deliver personalized nutrition, activity, sleep and stress‑management tools through audio, visual and...
STAT+: A Huntington’s Researcher on the UniQure-FDA Fray
UniQure’s experimental gene‑therapy for Huntington’s disease, which previously reported a 75% slowdown in disease progression, has received a third consecutive rejection from the FDA. The trial’s lead investigator, Ed Wild of University College London, praised the early data but warned...
'Ambulance Desert': Ala. Legislators Push Bill to Fix Rural EMS Crisis
Alabama lawmakers are advancing HB 269 and its companion HB 400 to overhaul ambulance reimbursement rates and allow "treat‑in‑place" billing, aiming to keep rural EMS providers financially viable. The measures respond to an "ambulance desert" landscape where response times can exceed an...
AI Startup Basecamp Research Announces Trillion-Gene Project
Basecamp Research, an AI‑focused biotech startup backed by Microsoft and Nvidia, announced a trillion‑gene sequencing initiative. The company aims to collect genetic sequences for over a trillion proteins within the next two years. Leveraging high‑performance cloud computing and advanced generative‑AI...
Epic Secures a £222m Federated EPR Contract Across Somerset and Dorset
In early March 2026 four NHS trusts in Somerset and Dorset signed a £222 million federated contract with US‑based Epic to replace a patchwork of legacy electronic patient record (EPR) and patient‑administration systems. The deal unifies Epic’s platform across Somerset NHS...
Ionis Delays Prion Disease Readout; Arvinas' Parkinson's Biomarker Data
Ionis Therapeutics announced that the primary completion date for its Phase 1/2a prion disease trial has been pushed to February 2027, extending the study timeline by more than two years. In parallel, Arvinas reported new biomarker data from its Parkinson’s disease program,...
Rox Heart Radio: On the Cusp of ACC 2026
Incoming ACC President Roxana Mehran discusses the upcoming 2026 ACC meeting in New Orleans on the Rox Heart Radio podcast. She outlines her vision for the organization, emphasizing data‑driven leadership, patient‑centered outcomes, and broader member engagement. The episode highlights strategic...
Kennedy’s Vaccine Agenda Stalled, Structure’s ‘Competitive’ Obesity Pill, Novo’s Warning Letter
Structure Therapeutics reported a 16.3% weight loss after 44 weeks in a Phase 2 trial of its oral GLP‑1 pill, positioning it as a competitive alternative to Eli Lilly’s and Novo Nordisk’s candidates. Rhythm Pharmaceuticals disclosed that its obesity drug Imcivree failed in...
Briggs Morrison's Crossbow Unveils $77M Series B for T Cell Engagers
Crossbow Therapeutics, founded by biotech veteran Briggs Morrison, announced a $77 million Series B round to accelerate its off‑the‑shelf T‑cell engager platform. The funding, led by a mix of venture capital and strategic investors, will support the advancement of three preclinical candidates...