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As Memorial Hermann and Aldine Independent School District’s HEAL high school prepares for its second year of operations, program leaders are surveying the transformation of its inaugural freshman class of students as they “step into the truth” of their career paths.  

The Health Education and Learning high school currently operates on the campus of Nimitz High School. It’s one of 13 health system and school district partnerships backed by $31 million in funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies. The program weaves healthcare education into a standard high school curriculum, with students spending part of their week on-site at Memorial Hermann Northeast Hospital in Humble, Texas. Each student chooses one of five healthcare pathways — nursing, pharmacy, physical and occupational therapy, medical imaging or nonclinical administration — and works toward earning an industry-recognized certification by graduation. 

The first class of freshmen started with 152 students and graduated 145. Now those freshmen are moving into their sophomore year of the program, with about 20 new students joining the sophomore cohort. The incoming class of freshman has 190 slots available, and has received over 250 applications, Adrian Bustillos, PhD, chief transformation officer at Aldine ISD, told Becker’s.

The program is supported by 32 teachers that teach the core content, as well as electives like fine arts and sports. Six Memorial Hermann staff members are also regular faces in the classroom, helping students connect their education to real-world application.

The HEAL high school is gearing up to enter its second year, and aims to enroll nearly 800 students by 2028.

“This program is giving us a platform to challenge the status quo,” Caitlin McVey, associate vice president of the Institute for Nursing Excellence at Houston-based Memorial Hermann Health System, told Becker’s.

Aldine ISD is the 12th largest in Texas, serving around 57,000 students. About 92% of their students are economically disadvantaged. 

“We’re in a healthcare desert — many families have to leave our boundaries just to access basic health services,” Dr. Bustillos said. “With this partnership, we’re creating pathways to high-wage, in-demand healthcare careers. Students are learning about healthcare, the points of health in a community and seeing real-world applications. Just as importantly, our students will grow into healthcare professionals who look like and understand the communities they serve.”

Becker’s sat down with HEAL high school leaders to learn how the first year went and what changes are coming as the program expands.

The first-year results

Seeing 14-year-olds walking the halls of Memorial Hermann has become a new normal, and the transformation has been incredible, leaders said.

“Seeing them start as 14-year-olds and return as 10th graders, they’re completely transformed,” Bryan Sisk, DNP, RN, senior vice president and chief nursing executive at Memorial Hermann, told Becker’s. “Yes, academics are essential, and we’re not lowering the bar, they’re rising to meet it. But their self-confidence, the mentorship they’re receiving, how they present themselves — it’s all evolving.”

Simple things like eye contact, introducing themselves and greeting people in the hallways are just a few ways students have grown. 

And for some students, this program is more than confidence building. At the beginning of the year, the program held a scrub ceremony where students received their first pair of work scrubs.

“After the scrub ceremony, students visited our Institute for Nursing Excellence, our simulated hospital,” Mr. Sisk said. “When we asked one student what it felt like to walk into the hospital wearing scrubs, she said, ‘I feel like I walked into my truth.’ That stopped me. A year ago, she hadn’t even considered healthcare as a career. Now, it’s not just a possibility — it’s her reality. And she can picture herself in that role.”

Students aren’t just picturing themselves as healthcare professionals, they’re learning the trade from day one. In English, they write about hip replacements. In math, they calculated dosages. On their weekly visit to the hospital, they learn why their education matters and what the real-world implications are. They’re also learning many healthcare processes like HIPAA modules, onboarding steps, vaccine requirements and more. 

Some students are also emerging as leaders. 

“The momentum is so strong that the students actually asked to start a HEAL ambassador program,” Ms. McVey said. “These ambassadors now go into middle schools and talk about the program: what it’s done for them, how yes, it’s hard, but how worth it it is. We’re seeing leadership emerge within the student body.”

But like any new initiative, there were some lessons learned from the first year of operations.

Lessons learned

Mr. Sisk and Ms. McVey pointed to two main lessons learned from the first class of students:

1. The value of embedding dedicated healthcare staff into the high school. The program started with six staff members including nurses, physical therapy, imaging, business and pharmacy professionals.

“They are truly driving this program,” Mr. Sisk said. “When you walk into the school, the students know them. They help shape the experience alongside our education partners. They’re not just guest speakers, they’re a part of the school. That’s been one of the biggest lessons learned: if you want a program like this to succeed, you need a consistent, engaged presence from the healthcare side.”

These team members are essential to connecting curriculum to hospital-based learning and reinforcing what students learn in the classroom, Ms. McVey said.

2. Learning how to interact with teachers, students and parents. “I didn’t even realize how much we’d need to learn until we were in it — how to interact with teachers, how to engage with students,” Mr. Sisk said. “It’s so different from our daily work, but it’s helped me grow both personally and professionally. I think our whole organization has grown from it.”

What’s coming next

Currently, the school is working on a state-of-the-art simulation lab that is an exact replica of Memorial Hermann, so students can practice with the same equipment they see in the hospital.  The organizations are also expanding its mentorship program that pairs students with nurses, physicians, therapists and even healthcare executives.

“We have more mentors than we can match students with. There’s a waitlist for Memorial Hermann employees wanting to participate,” Dr. Bustillos said.

As far as long-term goals, the school district and health system are working on improving postsecondary partnerships so that their pathways connect with a dual-credit opportunity or an industry-based certification. 

This includes finding a way to have 14-year-olds earn college credits while completing high school. 

“We hit barriers,” Mr. Sisk said. “Some [postsecondary] schools said, ‘Well, they’re 14, they can’t get credit,’ simply because no one had asked the question before. But by asking the right questions, and asking them in smart ways, we’ve been able to remove some of those barriers. Our partners have been great about working with us to meet accreditation standards and our internal requirements, especially since students will be moving into patient care settings. So just thinking differently, questioning norms — it’s made a huge difference.” 

The program is also expanding to meet growing demand and provide students with unique experiences every step of the way. 

“We want to make sure 10th graders have new, elevated experiences, not just repeats of what they did in ninth grade,” Ms. McVey said. “That means expanding opportunities.”

This includes adding Houston-based Memorial Hermann Greater Heights as a partnering hospital, as well as providing more advanced opportunities for medical training during summer infusion.

The first dual-cohort Summer Infusion wrapped up in June. There, rising freshmen had the opportunity to go through lab sessions and Life Flight experiences, and sophomores participated in a mock mass casualty drill with community partners. “We’re adapting constantly, and honestly, that adaptability might be one of the program’s biggest strengths,” Mr. Sisk said.
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xAI, the AI company founded by Elon Musk, has launched a new suite of tools called Grok for Government, aiming to provide U.S. government agencies with access to its advanced AI technologies, including in areas such as healthcare.

The initiative includes a new $200 million ceiling contract with the U.S. Department of Defense and makes xAI’s offerings available on the General Services Administration (GSA) schedule, allowing any federal agency to procure the company’s AI products.

According to the company’s July 14 press release, Grok for Government will deliver a set of “frontier AI products” to federal, state and local government customers. xAI said the suite is intended to make government services more efficient and support research and operational efforts in critical sectors.

Healthcare was named among several priority domains, alongside national security and fundamental science. xAI said it will offer “custom AI-powered applications to accelerate use cases” in these areas.

The Grok product family includes xAI’s latest large language model, Grok 4, which the company described as its most advanced system to date, citing strong reasoning capabilities and extensive pretraining. The suite also includes tools such as Deep Search and Tool Use, along with planned integrations.
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Pfizer is warning physicians that it expects a new shortage of Bicillin L-A, a long-acting penicillin injection that is currently the single recommended treatment for syphilis during pregnancy, CNN reported July 16. 

The drugmaker’s alert follows a July 10 recall of certain lots found to contain floating particles, which Pfizer traced to faulty stoppers from an outside vendor. The company said no adverse reactions have yet been reported. 

“We have identified the root cause to be associated with stoppers supplied from an external vendor and are implementing the appropriate corrective and preventative actions,” the company said in a statement to the news outlet. “We fully recognize the importance of this medicine for patients and are working as quickly as possible to resolve the matter.”

Bicillin L-A most recently saw a shortage in 2023. As a result, the FDA allowed imports of two equivalent products, Extencilline and Lentocillin, which were imported from Portugal and sold by Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs. 

For now, Pfizer has advised customers that it will give an update on the Bicillin supply no later than mid-August and said until stock is recovered, it will ration the available supply for the shots. Providers will be asked to fill out medical request forms and the company will send supplies on a per-patient system. 

“We’re in the midst of a congenital syphilis crisis, and we’ve been calling for an emergency declaration for congenital syphilis for years,” said Jeffrey Klausner, MD, a professor of clinical population and public health sciences at the Los Angeles-based University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine. “This threatens to make that even worse.”
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Artificial intelligence advancements have expanded the possibilities for digital tools to improve hospital workflows.

However, many of these technologies are still too new to have a track record of success. Becker’s reached out to four leaders to find which AI projects have garnered the best return on investment in clinical operations.

Editor’s note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length. 

Vi-Anne Antrum, DNP, RN. System Chief Nursing Officer at Cone Health (Greensboro, N.C.): We’ve implemented AI that interfaces directly with patients who have chronic illnesses, like hypertension or diabetes. The AI helps them engage in their own care — prompting them to schedule appointments, check blood sugar or blood pressure, and report those results. So far, we’ve outreached to thousands of patients and have seen nearly 60% schedule and attend a primary care appointment. And keep in mind — these are patients who hadn’t seen a provider in at least three years. That’s a big deal.

We’ve also seen great success with AI in the ambulatory space, particularly with ambient listening for providers. This has allowed our providers to spend less time documenting and more time talking with patients. It’s been a huge satisfier for both parties. Clinicians don’t go into medicine to document for hours, they want to take care of people. Ambient listening reduces burnout and supports well-being. I’m very excited to see that become more widely available to other clinicians.

On the leadership front, using tools like Microsoft Copilot has also been a win. Having it embedded in our suite has helped leaders take meeting notes, create action items, and reduce cognitive load. That frees them up to focus on more strategic issues instead of clerical tasks. That’s been great too.

Russell Cameron, MD. Chief Medical Information Officer and Vice President at PennHighlands Healthcare (Dubois, Pa.): [We use a] software that searches through the chart — both discrete as well as free text data — and presents an assessment and plan to the provider, with hyperlinks back to the parts of the charts where the data was found. 

Return on investment — definite improvement in collections per patient which far exceeded the cost of the software. This is because of increased specificity of diagnoses, increased number of complications or comorbidities and major complications or comorbidities, which helps the coders. Our original analysis showed the hospital’s case mix index increased close to 10%, with an increase in the complications or comorbidities/major complications or comorbidities capture rate of 7%.

Measurable improvement in quality — capturing the above data has helped change our measured quality measures like “mortality rates” because the observed to expected calculations are affected by the patient’s true degree of illness. This also provides a financial ROI thru various value-based reimbursement contracts.

Efficiency — the hospitalists have calculated that this software saves them about 10 minutes per note, or one to two hours per day, per hospitalist. Adoption by our hospitalists is over 95%. Notes are more standardized, which helps other providers find documentation. Although not measured, it is felt that the software decreased physician burnout. 

Nariman Heshmati, MD. Chief Physician and Operations Executive at Lee Physician Group (Fort Myers, Fla.): The one that’s had the best return right now is AI scribes. They’ve been the most reliable to implement, have broad reach and are clearly showing improvement. We’re already seeing reductions in pajama time and that’s been the most impactful so far. 

We’re also exploring AI for message triage, note generation, and visit routing — deciding if a patient should be scheduled for virtual care, in-person visits or self-care. But the data so far hasn’t shown a reduction in workload or message volume, so it’s unclear if those applications will pan out.

Joseph St. Geme III, MD. Physician-in-Chief and Chair of the Department of Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia: We’re in the process of implementing an ambient listening tool that is being rolled out as a series of pilots. This tool captures physician-patient/parent discussion during a patient encounter and then summarizes the exchange. I’m anticipating that this tool will have a major impact on physicians and on patients/parents, lightening the load for physicians related to documentation of the history during patient encounters and allowing physicians to engage with patients and parents, rather than focus on the computer. Application of a related tool will allow physicians to respond to patient and parent electronic communication more promptly and with less time and effort. Yet another related tool will allow much more efficient and accurate review and summary of dense patient charts, improving the process involved in consultation on patients with a long and complicated past history.
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Dallas-based Steward Health Care filed a lawsuit July 15 in bankruptcy court against its former chairman and CEO, Ralph de la Torre, MD, and other top system executives, claiming they conducted insider transactions that drained Steward’s assets and contributed to financial collapse. 

Steward sought Chapter 11 protection May 6, 2024, and has since worked to sell or close its 31-hospitals — many of which have drawn criticism for poor working conditions, substandard patient care, aging and unsafe facilities, and have faced lawsuits filed by unpaid vendors. 

Dr. de la Torre, who also drew criticism for his lavish lifestyle amid the system’s downfall, “amicably separated” from Steward on Oct. 1 and sued the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Sept. 30 after it held him in contempt for skipping a committee hearing for which he was subpoenaed. 

Steward’s 68-page lawsuit, obtained by Becker’s, outlined claims of self-dealing, breach of fiduciary duty and fraudulent transfers in its allegations. It named former Steward leaders, including Dr. de la Torre, former Steward Executive Vice President for Physician Services Michael Callum, First Bristol Corp. Co-CEO James Karam and former Steward President Sanjay Shetty, MD.

The lawsuit pointed to an $111 million dividend in January 2021, while Steward was allegedly insolvent, that was allegedly received by Steward board members including Dr. de la Torre, Mr. Callum and Mr. Karam. Dr. de la Torre received $81.5 million of the dividend and used $30 million of it to purchase a “superyacht,” the lawsuit said.

“In orchestrating the $111M Dividend, [Dr.] de la Torre was grossly negligent and breached the duties of care, loyalty and good faith that he owed to [Steward],” the lawsuit said. “[Mr.] Callum and [Mr.] Karam were likewise grossly negligent and breached their duties of care, loyalty and good faith.”

Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare was also listed as a defendant in the lawsuit regarding Steward’s purchase of five Tenet hospitals in Florida for around $1.1 billion in August 2022. The lawsuit claimed Tenet’s facilities were initially valued at $895 million by Steward, but a higher price was paid due to Dr. de la Torre’s “personal desire to build a hospital empire in the Miami area, rather than on any independent financial analysis,” the lawsuit said.

“Not only did [Steward] overpay, but [Dr.] de la Torre pushed the deal through before Steward could complete the closely-related sale of five Steward hospitals in Utah, which [Steward] expected to rely upon to provide it with the liquidity needed for the Tenet Transaction to succeed,” the lawsuit said. 

Steward claimed Tenet received a fraudulent transfer in connection with the deal, which included almost $209 million in cash that Steward contributed. It argued that Steward did not receive reasonably equivalent value for the payment and was left with an “unreasonably small capital in relation to its business both before and after making such payment.”

Steward also claimed that the proceeds of its 2022 value-based care assets sale to CareMax were diverted, with only $60.5 million of the $194 million sale going to the system. It alleged that the remainder went to entities run by Dr. de la Torre and other insiders. 

The lawsuit is seeking to gain hundreds of millions of dollars, hold defendants liable for damages that stem through fraud and breaches of duty and to disallow certain creditor claims. 

“Dr. de la Torre disputes the allegations of wrongdoing and will vigorously defend himself against them,” a spokesperson for Dr. de la Torre said in a July 16 statement shared with Becker’s.

The lawsuit comes after Steward received bankruptcy court approval July 16 to move forward with a liquidation plan to repay creditors with the lawsuit proceeds from previous system owners and insiders, Reuters reported.

Steward plans to seek more than $3 billion in legal claims against former creditors, insurers and insiders that received payment as the system headed toward bankruptcy. Steward has said recovering 13% of the claims would be enough to cover its bankruptcy costs, Reuters reported.

Becker’s has reached out to Steward Health Care and Tenet Healthcare for comment and will update this story should more information become available. 
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A team at Durham, N.C.-based Duke Health successfully developed and performed the world’s first on-table heart reanimation for a 3-month-old patient earlier this year.

The new technique enables surgeons to temporarily reanimate a donor heart outside of the body with the use of an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine. The process opens access for infant patients to receive hearts donated after circulatory death, according to a July 16 news release from the health system. 

Details of the procedure were published July 16 in The New England Journal of Medicine. 

Duke Health surgeons performed the U.S.’s first adult donation after circulatory death heart transplant in 2019 and the first adolescent donation after circulatory death heart transplant in 2021.

“This innovation was born out of necessity,” Joseph Turek, MD, PhD, chief of pediatric cardiac surgery at Duke Health and lead study author, said in the release. “We were determined to find a way to help the smallest and sickest children who previously had no access to DCD heart donation.”Read more about the procedure here.

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The American College of Cardiology has recognized more than 400 U.S. hospitals for their quality and consistency in meeting care guidelines for patients with acute myocardial infarction. 

To be eligible for a 2025 Performance Achievement Award, hospitals must be participants in the ACC’s Chest Pain-MI registry and meet certain performance metrics. 

Of the more than 400 hospitals recognized, 79 received a silver-level distinction, 24 received a gold-level distinction and 320 received a platinum-level distinction. Read the full list of award recipients here.
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Across seven states, at least 25% of hospitals reported they no longer provided obstetric services by 2022, and more than a two-thirds of rural hospitals in eight states were without obstetric services, a recent study found.

The study, published in the July issue of Health Affairs, drew data from the American Hospital Association Annual Surveys and CMS to find the availability of hospital-based obstetric services across all U.S. states and the District of Columbia. The analysis included 4,964 short-term acute care hospitals, including OB-GYN specialty hospitals, open during 2010 and 2022. Researchers calculated the percentage of hospitals that lost obstetric services and those without obstetric services by state, and for rural and urban hospitals within states. 

Researchers found that hospitals offering obstetric services have declined in nearly every state since 2010. The closures were a result of police and resource decisions, despite efforts from professional associations, health systems and community organizations to address obstetric care needs.

Three states had the highest percentage of rural hospitals without obstetrics — Florida at 87%, North Dakota at 81.1% and West Virginia at 70.4%  —- and two states had the highest percentage of urban hospitals without obstetrics — South Dakota at 72.7% and Hawaii at 62.5%.

Here are states with the most obstetric service losses.

States where more than 25% of all hospitals lost obstetric services: 

Iowa: 33.3%

West Virginia: 30%

District of Columbia: 28.6%

Rhode Island: 28.6%

Pennsylvania: 27.7%

South Carolina: 26.9%

Oklahoma: 26.2%

States with highest percentage of lost obstetric services lost in rural counties:

Pennsylvania: 46.2%

South Carolina: 46.2%

West Virginia: 42.9%

Florida: 40%

Iowa: 39.7%

District of Columbia: 28.6%

States with highest percentage of lost obstetric services lost in urban counties:

District of Columbia: 28.6%

Kansas: 30.4%

Rhode Island: 28.6%

Oklahoma: 27.6%

Hawaii: 25%

The states with the largest rural-urban differences in the percentage of hospitals that lost obstetric services: 

New Hampshire: 36.4% (rural), 0% (urban)

Florida: 40.0% (rural), 11.8% (urban)

South Carolina: 46.2% (rural), 20.5% (urban)

Pennsylvania: 46.2% (rural), 22.1% (urban)
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Hospital pharmacists are urging Congress to act on a number of their priorities, including Medicare coverage for pharmacist services and protections for residency funding. 

In a July 9 letter, Tom Kraus, vice president for the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, called on lawmakers to advance bills designed to improve access to pharmacy services, reduce medication costs and protect funding of critical residency programs, according to a July 11 news release from the organization. 

Among the bills cited in the letter is the Ensuring Community Access to Pharmacist Services Act. It would allow Medicare to reimburse pharmacists for services such as testing, vaccination and treatment for respiratory infections. 

The ASHP is also advocating for the Rebuild America’s Health Care Schools Act, which would clarify reimbursement rules for pharmacy, nursing and allied health residency programs under Medicare and Medicaid. 
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Recent Medicaid policy changes will result in 1,484 additional deaths and nearly 100,000 preventable hospitalizations per year, according to a study published July 16 in JAMA Health Forum. 

Two weeks before President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, another study projected 16,642 premature deaths annually among adults, based on the House of Representatives’ version of the bill. 

The Congressional Budget Office projects the sweeping policy bill will reduce Medicaid spending by $698 billion, decrease enrollment by 10.3 million and result in 7.6 million uninsured individuals by 2034. Using the CBO’s projection and a higher-effect scenario, researchers from University of California San Francisco and University of North Carolina Chapel Hill quantified estimates on health outcomes and health system viability. 

By 2034, the study predicts: 

Approximately 1,484 excess deaths, 94,802 preventable hospitalizations, 1.6 million people delaying care due to cost and 1.9 million cases of medication nonadherence.

One hundred and one rural hospitals will be at high risk of closure. Federally qualified health centers could lose 5 million Medicaid patients and gain 1.9 million uninsured patients annually, creating an 18.7% reduction in revenue reduction ($3.3 billion). 

In the higher-coverage loss scenario, 14.4 million people losing Medicaid coverage would annually result in 2,284 excess deaths, 145,946 preventable hospitalizations, 2.5 million people delaying care and 2.9 million cases of medication nonadherence. 

In conclusion, the researchers said the study has several limitations, including ongoing changes to statutory language, Medicare and coverage under the ACA.
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