Telehealth Helps Breast Cancer Patients Adhere to Treatment: Study
A recent study in the Journal of Cancer Survivorship found that breast cancer patients who used telehealth were 58% more likely to stay adherent to endocrine therapy than those who did not. Researchers examined claims data for over 1,100 commercially insured women under 65 with non‑metastatic disease, tracking treatment patterns for five years after initiation in 2018. The analysis suggests virtual visits help overcome transportation and logistical hurdles while enabling quicker management of medication side effects. The authors argue telehealth can be a critical tool for preventing cancer recurrence through sustained therapy.
Top 20 Hospitals Ranked by Community Benefit Spending: Lown Institute
The Lown Institute released its 2025‑26 ranking of the top 20 U.S. hospitals for community benefit spending, highlighting eight New York and four Texas facilities among the leaders. The methodology blends CMS cost‑report data on financial assistance and Medicaid revenue with...
The Healthcare Roles Least, Most Vulnerable to AI: Washington Post
Researchers at GovAI and the Brookings Institution released an AI‑exposure tool that ranks more than 350 healthcare occupations by vulnerability to automation. The analysis shows healthcare support workers and physician assistants face the lowest risk, while medical secretaries and administrative...
Northwestern Adds 5 Startups to Health Innovation Program
Northwestern Medicine and Techstars have announced the five startups joining the 2026 class of their health‑care accelerator. The 13‑week, mentorship‑driven program will run at Northwestern’s Mansueto Innovation Institute in Chicago, focusing on clinical care, digital health, therapeutics and AI. Selected...
BCBS Study: Hospital AI Billing Tools May Be Driving up Healthcare Costs by Billions
Blue Cross Blue Shield’s new study links hospital AI billing tools to a sharp rise in maternity‑related costs. Analyzing tens of thousands of inpatient claims, the research found acute post‑hemorrhagic anemia diagnoses tripled at the top 10% of hospitals without...
CMS Moves Forward with 3rd Round of Medicare Drug Negotiations
CMS announced that the third round of the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program will proceed with full manufacturer participation, covering 15 high‑cost, single‑source drugs and one drug slated for renegotiation. The agency will issue initial price offers by June 1, 2026,...
HCA’s Highest-Earning Executives in 2025
HCA Healthcare reported $6.8 billion net income on $75.6 billion revenue in 2025, driving a $0.7 billion rise in total executive compensation to $32.9 billion. CEO Sam Hazen’s pay jumped $2.7 million, reaching $26.46 million, while the five highest‑earning officers collectively earned over $53 million. The company...
Why some Health System CEOs Are Opting Out of Cross-Market Expansion
Health system CEOs are increasingly choosing to deepen services within their existing footprints rather than pursue cross‑market mergers. California’s stringent oversight and seismic safety mandates make out‑of‑state acquisitions financially risky for Scripps Health. Valleywise Health and Saint Francis Health System...
Piedmont, Encompass Tap CEO for Planned Georgia Hospital
Tom Morris has been appointed chief executive officer of Eastside Rehabilitation Hospital, a 40‑bed inpatient rehab facility under construction in Loganville, Georgia, slated to open in June. The hospital is a joint venture between Encompass Health and Piedmont, marking Encompass’s...
600 Workers Reach Labor Deal with Kaiser
The International Union of Operating Engineers reached a tentative contract with Kaiser Permanente covering about 600 maintenance workers across Southern California, the Mid‑Atlantic and Colorado. The agreement, involving IUOE Locals 501, 99 and 1, provides a 21.5% wage increase over...
Vanderbilt Health President, CEO to Retire
Jeff Balser, MD, PhD, will retire on Dec. 31 after 17 years as president and CEO of Vanderbilt Health and dean of Vanderbilt University’s School of Medicine. During his tenure the system grew from a four‑hospital, $2.3 billion revenue network to...
Hospital Margins Take a Dive
U.S. hospitals entered 2026 with operating margins at a 12‑month low, slipping to –0.6% for health systems and a 3.1‑point decline for individual hospitals. Patient demand and revenue growth slowed, especially in inpatient and emergency settings, while expense growth outpaced...
3 Healthcare Roles Bucking Hiring Trends for Younger Workers
A Stanford study using ADP payroll data finds that workers aged 22‑25 in occupations most exposed to generative AI saw a 16% relative employment decline, while older workers in the same roles remained stable. By contrast, younger workers in healthcare...
Data Breach at NYC Health + Hospitals Partner Exposes Info of 5,086 Patients
A data breach at NADAP, a care‑management partner of NYC Health + Hospitals, exposed protected health information for 5,086 patients. The unauthorized access occurred around Nov. 26, 2025 and was discovered on Jan. 10, 2026, with the health system notified...
MSU Health Care’s CMO on the Biggest Barrier to Sustained Quality Improvement
MSU Health Care’s new chief medical officer, Dr. Mark Smith, says clinician burnout and disengagement are the biggest barriers to sustained quality and safety improvements. He emphasizes that addressing workforce wellness, building a culture of trust, and reducing administrative burdens...
Arkansas Hospital Taps Chief Nurse
Heather Hornbuckle, RN, has been appointed chief nursing officer of Southwest Arkansas Regional Medical Center, a 25‑bed critical access hospital in Hope, Arkansas. Hornbuckle brings more than two decades of nursing leadership and bedside experience to the role. She will...
UF Health CNO: Why a 7-Day Hiring Cycle Is Crucial
UF Health appointed Janice Walker as its inaugural chief nursing officer and introduced a seven‑day recruitment cycle to prevent losing qualified nurses. Walker frames slow hiring as a "never event," shifting the process from employer‑centric to candidate‑centric. The model relies...
Georgia System to Add 100 Residency Positions
St. Joseph’s/Candler health system in Savannah will launch a new residency program offering 103 positions across internal medicine, family medicine, cardiovascular disease fellowship, and general surgery. The initiative is backed by nearly $17 million in state funding approved in the 2026...
Hospital Expenses Grew Twice as Fast as Prices in 2025: 4 AHA Findings
American hospitals' operating expenses surged 7.5% in 2025, more than double the growth rate of hospital prices. The AHA report highlights sharp increases in drug costs (13.6%), medical supplies (9.9%), and workforce compensation, which now accounts for roughly 60% of...
Microsoft: AI Tools Now Handle 50M Health Questions Daily
Microsoft reported that its consumer AI tools, including Bing and Copilot, now field more than 50 million health‑related questions each day. An analysis of over 500,000 anonymized health conversations in January 2026 showed health is the top topic on mobile devices,...
Ascension Hospital in Kansas Taps New President
Patrick Avila has been named president of Ascension Via Christi Hospital in Manhattan, Kansas, effective April 20, succeeding interim leader Drew Talbott. Avila arrives with more than 25 years of healthcare leadership, most recently as CEO of Northeast Regional Medical...
COOs’ Role Gains Complexity Amid Outpatient Care Shift
Healthcare chief operating officers are confronting a dramatically broader remit as care migrates to outpatient, virtual and community settings. A WittKieffer study shows 80% of COOs say their duties have surged, with 63% adding more direct reports, while operational oversight...
California Hospital CEO to Retire Amid Chapter 11 Process
Oroville Hospital President and CEO Robert Wentz is retiring after more than four decades of service, with the board approving a leadership transition to COO Scott Chapple. The change will take effect once the Chapter 11 reorganization plan receives court...
Montrose Regional, Colorado Hospital Explore Partnership
Montrose Regional Health and Grand Junction’s Community Hospital have signed a letter of intent to explore forming a tax‑exempt nonprofit entity. The partnership would focus on nonclinical functions such as information technology alignment, group purchasing, long‑term planning, and revenue‑cycle optimization....
Lumina Health Partners Joins ECG Management Consultants
Lumina Health Partners has joined ECG Management Consultants, integrating its co‑founders into ECG’s Payer Strategy and Contracting Division. The move deepens ECG’s expertise in value‑based care, combining Lumina’s ten‑year track record advising hospitals with ECG’s national scale and tech‑enabled solutions....
Tennessee OKs $900M Regional One Health Hospital
Regional One Health received a certificate of need from the Tennessee Health Facilities Commission to build a $900 million hospital on the former Commercial Appeal site in Memphis. The project, slated to break ground in late September 2025, is underpinned by a...
Adventist HealthCare to Close Freestanding ER
Adventist HealthCare announced it will close the Germantown Emergency Center, a freestanding ER in Maryland, effective July 1 pending state approval. The decision follows a roughly one‑third drop in patient volume, with many visits for low‑acuity conditions that could be...
10 Drugs Expected to Lead US Sales in 2026
Statista projects that the U.S. pharmaceutical market will be led by ten blockbuster drugs in 2026, with Merck’s Keytruda topping the list at $12.7 billion in sales. Four oncology therapies—Keytruda, Opdivo, Imbruvica and Ibrance—are among the top ten, underscoring cancer’s continued...
Highmark Health Generates $28M in Value with Google AI
Highmark Health, a Pittsburgh‑based payer‑provider, reported $27.9 million in generated value for 2025 from its Google Cloud‑built AI assistant, Sidekick. Employees have prompted the tool more than six million times, expanding active use cases to 74, up from 31 the previous...
Shared IT Model Helps Rural Hospitals Access Technology, Cut Costs
Opelousas General Health System partnered with Triad Executive Advisors to build a shared IT infrastructure that rural hospitals can tap into without raising expenses. The model centralizes network operations, security, EMR management and a new AI‑enabled PACS system, allowing participating...
Why Telehealth Skills Belong at the Core of Clinical Education
Telehealth is moving from an optional service to a routine component of clinical practice, forcing health‑care educators to rethink curricula. The 2024 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Workforce Research Recap highlights soaring telehealth utilization and a skills gap...
FDA Flags Safety Risk with Boston Scientific Stents
The FDA has classified Boston Scientific’s recall of certain Axios Stent and Electrocautery‑Enhanced Delivery Systems as a Class I recall, the agency’s most serious designation. The recall follows multiple reports of deployment and expansion failures during stent placement, resulting in...
University of Utah Health Helps ‘Reimagine’ the EHR
University of Utah Health researchers are leveraging AI and machine learning to "reimagine" electronic health records (EHR) through the federally funded Reimagine EHR initiative. Backed by roughly $35 million in federal grants and corporate partnerships, the program has produced eight AI‑driven...
University of Mississippi Medical Center to Resume Clinic Operations After Cyberattack
University of Mississippi Medical Center announced that its outpatient clinics will resume normal operations statewide on March 2, following a cyberattack that shut down its IT systems on Feb. 21. The center has regained access to patient records and will...
UNC Health Unveils Rare Disease Coding Tool in Epic
UNC Health has launched the world’s first standardized rare‑disease coding tool by embedding the Mondo Disease Ontology into Epic’s EHR through the February 2026 IMO Core update. The integration adds nearly 5,000 new rare‑disease codes and revises more than 25,000...
EHR Strategy Becomes a Recruitment Lever for Health Systems
Chief medical information officers are reframing EHR and AI investments from pure operational upgrades to strategic tools for clinician recruitment, retention, and burnout mitigation. Leaders at Sentara Health report over 75% adoption of AI‑generated discharge summaries, citing significant time savings...
14 Health Systems Extend EHR Contracts with Altera Digital Health
Fourteen health systems have signed multiyear extensions for Altera Digital Health’s Sunrise electronic health record, reinforcing the vendor’s foothold in the acute‑care market. The renewed contracts cover institutions such as Phoenix Children’s, St. Mary’s, Grand Lake Health System and Hospital for...
Health Systems Save Millions by Eliminating IT Applications
Health systems are realizing significant cost savings by consolidating their IT application portfolios. Emplify Health eliminated over 30 applications, cutting $3 million in direct costs and $1.3 million in soft savings, while Providence reduced its portfolio by more than a third, saving...
9 Epic Updates in 30 Days
Epic announced nine significant updates in the past 30 days, ranging from new hospital go‑lives and record‑setting lab data‑exchange deployments to the rollout of its AI Charting tool. Major health systems such as UPMC and Northwell Health are deepening their...
FDA Unveils Pathway for Ultra-Rare Disease Therapies
The FDA released draft guidance introducing the Plausible Mechanism Framework, a new approval pathway for individualized therapies targeting ultra‑rare diseases. The framework permits sponsors to seek clearance for gene‑editing and RNA‑based treatments when traditional randomized trials are infeasible due to...
How Health Systems Are Tackling Behavioral Health Fragmentation
Health systems are confronting fragmented behavioral‑health delivery through multiple tactics, including rapid expansion of telepsychiatry, creation of integrated pediatric health hubs, and the launch of dedicated behavioral‑health urgent‑care sites. In West Virginia, virtual visits now account for just over half...
6 Lessons Shaping Health System Strategic Leaders’ Operational Approach for 2026
Health system leaders are reshaping 2026 operations amid technology, regulation, and labor pressures. Executives from Cedars‑Sinai to Novant Health stress frontline immersion, cost‑control focus, system‑design that simplifies right actions, and building trust through candid dialogue. Prioritizing a narrow set of...
New Mexico Hospital Deploys AI Platform Enterprisewide
San Juan Regional Medical Center in Farmington, New Mexico, has rolled out Wellsheet’s AI documentation platform across its entire enterprise. The solution, already active in more than 100 U.S. hospitals, promises physicians 90‑120 minutes of daily documentation savings and a...
Telehealth for Primary Care Levels Off: Epic
Epic’s analysis of 411 million primary‑care visits shows telehealth usage has plateaued at roughly 6‑7 % of appointments since mid‑2023, following the pandemic‑driven surge. The share remains highest in metropolitan areas, with lower adoption in micropolitan, rural and small‑town settings. Adults aged...
Fitch Downgrades Missouri Hospital to ‘D’ Rating
Fitch downgraded John Fitzgibbon Memorial Hospital in Marshall, Missouri to a “D” rating from “C” and withdrew its issuer and bond ratings after the hospital defaulted on required debt payments. The default concerns principal and interest on 2010 bonds, and...
Marshfield Clinic to Open 13th Hospital March 1
Marshfield Clinic will open its 13th hospital on March 1 in Wisconsin Rapids, adding a full‑service acute‑care facility to the existing Marshfield Clinic Wisconsin Rapids Center. The new campus features inpatient beds, an emergency department, advanced imaging such as CT...
Central Maine Healthcare Joins Prime
Prime Healthcare Foundation announced the acquisition of Central Maine Healthcare, adding the Lewiston‑based medical center, Bridgton Hospital, Rumford Hospital, a residential care facility, a health‑professionals college, a cancer center and over 40 physician practices to its portfolio. The deal brings...
Cleveland Clinic 1st to Use New Robot for Prostate Surgery
Cleveland Clinic became the first U.S. health system to perform a robotic‑assisted prostatectomy using the newly FDA‑cleared Hugo RAS system. The robot, approved in December, features modular arms and an open‑console that surgeons control with foot pedals and hand inputs....
Building on a Foundation of Culture and Trust: How Jefferson Health Reopened a Hospital Just 9 Days After a Fire
On Feb. 4, a fire engulfed the Orthopedic Institute building at Jefferson Health’s Lehigh Valley Hospital‑Dickson City, prompting the evacuation of more than 70 patients. Thanks to extensive disaster training and coordinated effort among staff, first responders, and local partners, no...
Jefferson Posts $201M Operating Loss in H1
Thomas Jefferson University, owner of Jefferson Health, posted a $201 million operating loss for the first half of fiscal 2026, reflecting a -2.3% operating margin. The loss includes $64.7 million in restructuring expenses tied to a planned layoff of roughly 650 employees....