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Rural hospitals often operate with far fewer days of cash on hand than larger health systems, which can leave little room to absorb a financially challenging year, like unexpected capital needs or staffing shortages.  Rural healthcare leaders have taken to tightening their revenue cycle operations, rethinking how and when they…

Seventy-nine percent of nurses intend to remain in nursing, but only 51% plan to stay with their current employer, according to AMN Healthcare’s 2026 Healthcare Workforce Outlook Survey, released Sept. 15. AMN Healthcare, a healthcare staffing and workforce solutions company, conducted the online survey from Feb. 24 to March 31,…

Elbert (Ga.) Memorial Hospital has asked for a $250,000 contribution from the Elbert County Board of Commissioners to sustain the facility’s operations, including a matched contribution request from the City of Elberton, according to a Sept. 10 Facebook post from the hospital.  The 25-bed critical access hospital said it has…

Only 61 hospitals earned five-star ratings for both overall hospital quality and patient experience.  Becker’s compared CMS’ Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems survey, which captures patients’ experiences during a recent hospital stay, with the agency’s Overall Hospital Quality Star Rating, which factors mortality, safety of care, readmissions,…

The Veterans Health Administration stated that 82% of medical centers had severe shortages of practical nurses and 80% were severely short of psychology employees in the past 12 months, according to a Sept. 11 report.  The report is the 13th iteration from the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector…

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology topped Forbes’ 2026 ranking of America’s top colleges, a list that includes several schools affiliated with academic health systems. Forbes’ “America’s Top Colleges” ranking, published Sept. 10, includes 500 four-year institutions. It evaluates schools using 14 data points, including graduation and retention rates, alumni salaries,…

Septicemia is the most expensive condition treated in hospitals, amounting to $60 billion, a Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project report found.  The report, published February 2026, used 2022 data from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project on hospital costs of inpatient stays in nonfederal…

A phishing scam impersonating MyChart is targeting patients at health systems across the country, with fraudulent emails and texts dangling a “MyChart Medicare Kit” or “Senior Health Package” to trick recipients into clicking malicious links or handing over personal information. The messages, which use subject lines such as “Your MyChart…

Hospitals and health systems are bracing for a potential wave of baby boomer retirements. Meanwhile, many Generation X workers could stay in their roles longer, according to an Aug. 19 Korn Ferry article. Professionals in their mid-50s used to be eyeing “one more move and a 10-year runway,” Renee Whalen,…

SCAN Health Plan and Costco will roll out insurance products for older adults in the coming years, according to an Aug. 18 news release. The Wall Street Journal reported that the companies would begin by selling jointly branded Medicare Advantage products in two states, as well as a Medicare supplement…

Higher pay, flexible work arrangements and a clearer path to the top would make Gen Z and millennial workers more likely to pursue leadership roles, according to Deloitte’s 2026 Gen Z and Millennial Survey. The findings are based on responses from 14,384 Gen Zers and 8,211 millennials across 44 countries,…

Vaccination coverage among the nation’s kindergartners slipped again in the 2025-26 school year while the share of children claiming exemptions climbed to a record 4.2%, new CDC data shows. Coverage for the MMR vaccine fell to 92.4%, down from 92.5% a year earlier and below the 95% threshold public health…

More than 8 in 10 employers say rising healthcare costs are cutting into wage and salary increases, according to a survey conducted by The National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions. The 2026 Pulse of the Purchaser survey, released Aug. 12, includes responses from 408 employers in May and June. Four…

A year of University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing research points to a consistent finding: the staffing numbers hospitals track most closely to predict patient safety are less reliable than nurses’ own read. Here is what Penn Nursing’s recent work has found: 1. A nurse’s read on staffing can beat…

More than 3,700 hospitals — roughly 85% of U.S. acute care and critical access hospitals — received a score from at least one of five major hospital rankings this year. Becker’s compiled and compared the 2026 results of U.S. News & World Report‘s Best Hospitals, the CMS Overall Hospital Quality…

The 20 hospitals on U.S. News and World Report’s 2026-27 Best Hospitals Honor Roll collectively employ hundreds of thousands of workers across some of the most competitive healthcare labor markets in the country.  The HR and administrative leaders overseeing those workforces include longtime executives and leaders who stepped into their…

U.S. News and World Report’s 2026-2027 rankings for cardiology, heart and vascular surgery look different from last year’s list in more than just the order of names. Here are four of the biggest shifts between this year’s ranking and the 2025-2026 edition. The methodology changed from a composite score to…

Mississippi appears in the top five states for highest mortality across eight chronic conditions, the CDC found. The CDC calculated mortality rates from 10 chronic diseases in every state. Mortality rate is the number of deaths per 100,000 total population and is age-adjusted. The most recent data for 2024 was…

U.S. News & World Report released its annual Best States rankings July 28, evaluating all 50 states on how they best serve their residents across eight categories: healthcare, education, economy, infrastructure, opportunity, fiscal stability, crime and corrections, and natural environment. Utah ranked No. 1 overall for the fourth consecutive year.…

More data is pointing to concerns of skyrocketing healthcare costs in the upcoming years. Steeper medical utilization is one cause for concern, according to several sources. Meanwhile, HR 1 is radically reshaping Medicaid, and the expiration of ACA enhanced subsidies risk more people going uninsured. Here are eight things to…

A total of 743 general acute-care hospitals have closed across the United States since 2000, according to a July 22 news release from the Health Care Affordability Lab at Yale University in New Haven, Conn., and shared with Becker’s. The closure data is tracked through June 1, 2026. Hospital beds…

San Francisco is the fastest-growing large U.S. city for jobs and talent, according to a July 22 list from LinkedIn News. It was created by identifying the U.S. cities with the strongest job market momentum and net positive migration, focusing on areas with more than 2.5 million LinkedIn members. Dallas…

Nearly 1 in 4 U.S. workers (24%), the equivalent of about 23 million adults, are staying in jobs they want to leave to keep their employer-sponsored health insurance, according to a July 21 report from the West Health-Gallup Center on Healthcare in America. The share marks an 8-percentage-point rise since…

Emergency medicine physicians per capita vary more than fourfold across the U.S., from 51.32 per 100,000 residents in the District of Columbia to 11.55 in Alabama, according to data from KFF and the U.S. Census Bureau.  Becker’s used KFF’s count of professionally active emergency medicine physicians, sourced from Redi-Data as…