Kelly Gooch

U.S. News & World Report said May 20 that it has made significant refinements to its Best Hospitals methodology to reflect changes in care delivery, data availability and measurement science. Six things to know, per U.S. News: 1. Risk-adjusted outcome measures will carry more weight in determining adult specialty rankings…

Fifty-two healthcare companies landed on Forbes’ ninth annual list of America’s Best Employers for New Grads. The ranking, published May 19, was created in partnership with market research firm Statista. It is based on survey responses from more than 100,000 professionals with less than a decade of work experience who…

Most of the top-paying states for nurses, adjusted for cost of living, are in the Midwest or the West, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Becker’s used the latest BLS data, released May 15 and up to date as of May 2025, to determine the hourly pay rate by…

Twenty-three healthcare employers were featured on LinkedIn News’ city-specific top companies lists. The lists use LinkedIn data to analyze key markers of career progression, including ability to advance, skills growth, company stability, external opportunity, company affinity, gender diversity, educational background and employee presence in the city, according to the May…

Celina, Texas, was the fastest-growing U.S. city in the year ending July 1, 2025, with its population increasing 24.6%, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Dallas-based Methodist Health System met that growth with the spring 2025 opening of the 51-bed Methodist Celina Medical Center — the city’s first hospital and…

Flint, Mich., is the most affordable U.S. city to buy a home, according to a recent ranking from personal finance website WalletHub. Median home sales prices jumped from $313,000 in the first quarter of 2019 to $403,200 in the first quarter of 2026, according to a May 19 WalletHub ranking. …

Ebola is making international headlines again after the World Health Organization declared a global public health emergency, but the CDC said the risk to the U.S. is low.  Here are 10 things hospital leaders need to know about the current outbreak. 1. This is the third time the WHO has…

Leaving the workforce before retirement age could speed up cognitive decline, while working into older ages may help delay it, according to a recent study. Six things to know: 1. Working near retirement age appears to lower the risk of cognitive decline, a precursor to dementia, based on correlational evidence…

Several startups with a footprint in healthcare made CNBC’s annual Disruptor 50 rankings May 19, with one AI giant surpassing a rival in 2026. Anthropic passed OpenAI to rank No. 1 on this year’s list, with both companies recently unveiling healthcare AI offerings. An advisory board weighs the criteria for…

Emory Decatur Hospital in Decatur, Ga., part of Emory Healthcare, has launched the health system’s first residency program for emergency department nurses. The Emergency Nurses Association Nurse Residency Program is also the first of its kind in the Atlanta area, according to a May 18 Emory Healthcare news release. The…

Private insurance prices grew 47% more quickly than Medicare rates over seven years, KFF reported May 18. Healthcare costs are a top concern for systems, patients and lawmakers, and prices vary across regions and hospitals and payers within those regions. High prices can result in higher premiums and cost-sharing obligations,…

Mean annual wages for hospital workers range from $37,080 for maids and housekeeping cleaners to $454,940 for cardiologists, according to newly released federal data. Registered nurses — the nation’s largest healthcare occupation — earned a mean annual wage of $101,420 nationwide, according to May 2025 occupational wage data released May…

Updated May 2026 workforce data from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing show men accounted for a smaller share of registered nurses in 2024 than in 2022. Five notes: 1. Men represented 10.4% of registered nurses in 2024, down from 11.2% in 2022, according to data from the National…

California has the highest hourly mean wage for registered nurses in the U.S., while Oregon has the highest hourly mean wage for RNs when adjusted for cost of living, according to data released May 15 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Below are the mean annual and hourly wages for…

Workforce spending remained hospitals’ top expense in 2025, representing 60% of total expenses, according to the American Hospital Association.  Workforce costs rose 5.6% in 2025 as hospitals continued increasing wages and investing in recruitment and retention efforts for nurses, physicians and other staff, according to the AHA’s 2026 “Cost of…

Becker’s has compiled a list of the hospitals with a CMS 5-star rating for cleanliness. CMS’ Patient survey (HCAHPS)-Hospital database listed hospital ratings based on the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems surveys. This is a national, standardized survey of hospital patients about their experience during a recent…

On the surface, the conventional rural health story is one marked by rising financial pressures, dwindling care access and closure risks. But those constraints don’t define rural healthcare, and the idea that rural systems are always playing “catch up” to their urban counterparts isn’t always true. Dr. Prathibha Varkey, president…

In 2025, the average U.S. hospital lost $5.19 million from registered nurse turnover. Financially and operationally, a persistently high turnover rate among early-career nurses presents a growing risk for the industry, according to Press Ganey’s “State of Nursing 2026” report. The report, published May 11, analyzed data from 422,761 registered…

Forty-one percent of nurses report using AI regularly, compared to 57% of physicians, and of those who use AI, only 30% regularly use clinician-specific tools, a May 12 Elsevier report found.  Elsevier’s “Clinician of the Future 2026” report gathered responses from 2,757 clinicians, including physicians and nurses, across 118 countries. …

Healthgrades recognized 80 hospitals with its 2026 Outstanding Patient Experience Award and the Patient Safety Excellence Award. The organization evaluated 3,020 hospitals that submitted at least 100 patient experience surveys to CMS’ Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems between January and December 2024. Hospitals were evaluated on patient…

Healthgrades recognized 373 hospitals with its 2026 Outstanding Patient Experience Award. The organization evaluated 3,020 hospitals that submitted at least 100 patient experience surveys to CMS’ Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems between January and December 2024. Hospitals in the bottom 20% of overall clinical quality were excluded…

Only 20 states are prepared for a public health emergency, a new Trust for America’s Health report found. The “Ready or Not 2026: Protecting the Public’s Health from Diseases, Disasters, and Bioterrorism” report groups states into three performance tiers: high, middle and low. States were grouped based on their performance…

Atlanta topped WalletHub’s 2026 ranking of the best and worst places to start a career, while New York City ranked worst. For the ranking, released May 11, the personal finance company compared 182 cities — including the 150 most-populated U.S. cities, plus at least two of the most populated cities…

Hospital margins are under pressure and the latest data shows the strain is not evenly distributed. According to Kaufman Hall’s April 2026 National Hospital Flash Report, which draws on data from more than 1,300 hospitals nationwide, hospital finances are being squeezed from multiple directions at once. Expenses are running higher…