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Five U.S. hospitals have received an “F” safety grade from The Leapfrog Group for spring 2026. 

Leapfrog calculates hospital safety grades using up to 22 CMS patient safety measures, data from the Leapfrog Hospital Survey and supplemental imputation. Read more about Leapfrog’s methodology here.

For spring 2026, safety grades were not assigned to the 450 hospitals that did not participate in the Leapfrog Hospital Survey in 2024 or 2025. 

The move comes after five Palm Beach (Fla.) Health Network hospitals — part of Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare — filed a lawsuit against Leapfrog after receiving “F” and “D” safety grades. In March, a federal judge ruled the hospitals were deliberately punished with artificially low scores for not participating in the voluntary Leapfrog Hospital Survey. Under the ruling, Leapfrog was required to withdraw the five hospitals’ safety grades for fall 2024, spring 2025 and fall 2025 from its websites and send corrective disclosures to all entities that paid to license those grades. 

“Although the court ruling only applied to five hospitals, Leapfrog does not apply programmatic changes to individual hospitals because the hospital safety grade is a national program. We expect to resume full grading in fall 2026,” Leapfrog said in a May 6 news release.

Hospitals have pushed back on Leapfrog’s safety grades for years, arguing the methodology is flawed and unfairly penalizes hospitals that do not participate. Two hospitals filed similar lawsuits in 2017 and 2019, though the cases were eventually dismissed.

In previous years, the “F” list has included more than a dozen hospitals.

Here is the most recent list:

Illinois 

Roseland Community Hospital (Chicago)

Mississippi 

South Central Regional Medical Center (Laurel)

West Virginia

CAMC Teays Valley Hospital (Hurricane)

Weirton Medical Center 

WVU Fairmont Medical Center 

See the list of Leapfrog’s 11 “A” hospitals here. 

The post Where are Leapfrog’s 5 ‘F’ hospitals?  appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

As U.S. nurses increasingly employ AI in their day-to-day tasks, the American Nurses Association is advocating for more nurse-led guardrails amid concerns of bias, unclear accountability and a decline in professional judgement. 

On April 22, the ANA hosted an invitation-only “AI in Nursing Practice Think Tank” for nursing leaders to discuss how AI is affecting the profession and what safety protocols should be implemented. 

According to a consensus summary, nursing leaders identified five areas of concern:

1. Erosion of professional judgement and critical thinking: “Poorly designed or rapidly deployed tools may diminish nurses’ ability to see the whole patient, question outputs and exercise professional reasoning.” They also voiced worries about overreliance and automation bias.
2. Unclear accountability and liability: Nursing leaders are concerned about responsibility when AI tools influence care decisions. A common concern was fear of licensure exposure.
3. Bias that worsens equity and trust: Patient safety could be at risk if AI tools have algorithmic bias or incorrect data, leaders said. 
4. Cognitive burden and workflow harm: Even if an AI is designed to alleviate workload, a poor rollout can negatively affect cognitive burden.
5. Lack of nursing-specific governance and standards: Most AI frameworks do not specify nursing and are not applicable to practices at the bedside, in education or decision-making. 

In its May 5 report, the ANA — which represents more than 5 million U.S. nurses — recommended five action items to address these concerns: 

• Issuing clear, nurse-led guardrails

• Curating a nursing AI playbook

• Advancing AI literacy and competence

• Strengthening policy and regulatory advocacy

• Sustaining robust cross-sector collaboration

Access the report here.

The post Nurses fret AI overreliance could erode care, call for more guardrails appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

For every additional patient assigned to a medical-surgical nurse in Pennsylvania, there is an associated 8% increase in fatality risk within 30 days, according to a study published April 30 in Medical Care. 

The study analyzed outcomes of nearly 550,000 medical and surgical patients who received care at a Pennsylvania hospital in 2022 or 2023. More than 2,700 direct care nurses were included in the study, which compared patient outcomes to med-surg nurse staffing ratios. 

Researchers at the Philadelphia-based University of Pennsylvania’s nursing department conducted the study, as well as several others focused on nurse-to-patient ratios. In Pennsylvania hospitals, unit-specific plans govern staffing rather than mandated ratios.

Across 132 Pennsylvania hospitals, each additional patient assigned to a nurse was associated with 8% higher odds of patient death within 30 days, 4% higher odds of hospital readmission and 2% increase in length of stay, the study found. 

Hospital nurse staffing varies from three to nine patients per nurse in Pennsylvania, according to a May 5 news release from Penn Nursing. The study found an average of 5.9 patients per med-surg nurse, which researchers said is a high workload that can worsen outcomes and employee well-being. 

Each additional patient per nurse was associated with 33% higher odds of increased nurse burnout, 43% higher odds of job dissatisfaction and 27% higher odds of intent to leave, according to the study. 

If hospitals imposed a 4-to-1 nurse-to-patient ratio in med-surg units, the researchers estimate Pennsylvania hospitals could annually save $66 million due to lower turnover. They also predicted 70,000 fewer hospital days — aka, lower length of stay — resulting in more than $239 million in savings per year. 

“[H]ospital variation in nurse staffing is quite consequential for whether patients survive their hospital stay,” the researchers concluded. “Our study and others suggest that nurse understaffing is associated with turnover and setting minimum safe nurse staffing is a direct intervention to reduce understaffing.”

The post Fatality risk grows 8% per added med-surg nurse patient: Study appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Birmingham-Hoover, Ala., is the top U.S. metropolitan area for college degree holders in their 20s, according to a study from payroll provider ADP.

ADP analyzed anonymized payroll data from more than 209,000 Americans ages 20-29 at more than 20,000 U.S. employers from January 2025 to January 2026, according to the analysis, which was published May 3. The study ranked 53 U.S. metropolitan areas with at least 1 million residents, grading them on wages, hiring and cost of living.

The metropolitan areas were ranked based on their combined percentile across annual wage estimates, nation-to-metro cost of living ratio, affordability-adjusted annual wage and hiring rates.

Below are the 10 top-ranked metropolitan areas, along with their combined percentile rank:

1. Birmingham-Hoover, Ala. — 100

2. Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Fla. — 98

3. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, Calif. — 96

4. Columbus, Ohio — 94

5. Raleigh, N.C. — 92

6. Tulsa, Okla. — 90

7. San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, Calif. — 88

8. Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin, Tenn. — 87

9. Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, N.C. — 85

10. New York City-Newark-Jersey City, N.J. — 83

The post 10 hiring ‘hot spots’ for new graduates appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Thomas “Tog” Goss, MSN, RN, was appointed CEO of Putnam General Hospital in Eatonton, Ga., effective June 1.

Mr. Goss will join Putnam General from Atrium Health Navicent Baldwin, a 140-bed acute care hospital in Milledgeville, Ga., where he serves as COO, according to a hospital news release. Atrium Health Navicent, based in Macon, Ga., is part of Charlotte, N.C.-based Advocate Health, which operates a network of hospitals and affiliates across central Georgia, including Navicent Baldwin. Putnam General is affiliated with the Navicent network.

He will succeed Alan Horton, who is retiring after 12 years as CEO and nearly 50 years in hospital leadership.

Mr. Goss has a clinical and operational background, with experience as an emergency medical technician, registered nurse and nursing director.

The post Georgia hospital names Atrium Health Navicent Baldwin COO as CEO appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Physician burnout is declining, systems are finding new ways to recruit physicians without raising pay, but international physicians are in limbo amid visa renewal delays. There are just a few things to know about the physician workforce in 2026.

Here is where the workforce stands in the first half of the year:

1. Across all physician specialties in the U.S., there is a projected shortage of 141,160 full-time equivalent physicians in 2038, according to a December report from the Health Resources and Services Administration. 

2. About 59% of healthcare executives said physician specialists are the most difficult clinical job to fill. 

3. Pay and financial incentives used to have the greatest impact on physician recruitment, but in recent years, pay has become a smaller factor in why a physician chooses their employer. Physician executives told Becker’s some of the best tools to recruit physicians include a strong culture, opportunities to practice to the top of their license, providing a personal touch during the recruitment process and providing a clinical environment where they can practice what they’ve trained to do. 

4. Visa processing delays are sidelining foreign physicians at hospitals and clinics across the nation, adding to staffing shortages and recruitment headaches for hospitals. In October, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services froze automatic extensions of employment authorizations for visas. In December, the Trump administration released Proclamation 10998, which implemented a full suspension of entry to the U.S. for nationals from 19 countries, and a partial suspension of entry from 20 countries. Although the travel ban does not apply to visa holders in the U.S., the agency paused visa renewals and updates for people from those countries.

This subjected more than 10,000 physician H-1B visa holders and 17,000 with J-1s, along with thousands of nurses, lab techs and other healthcare workers to the visa pause. Some foreign physicians have waited months for an update on their application, even after their hospital paid a $2,965 fee to fast-track their applications so they would receive it in two weeks. Because most medical residencies begin or end in the summer, a wave of physician visas are expected to expire within weeks, forcing foreign physicians to miss fellowship deadlines, forgo jobs or be sidelined from their current position while waiting for renewal. Physicians on H-1Bs, a visa for highly skilled workers, can keep treating patients for 240 days after their visa expires, but that date is passing for many. 

5. Among U.S. resident physicians, about 8 in 10 are in specialty programs and the remainder are in subspecialty programs. Primary care specialties made up the top specialties; internal medicine alone accounted for about one-fifth of all residents. Only 56.4% of non-U.S. international medical graduates matched to a post-graduate year 1, or PGY-1, position, representing a 1.6% decrease from 2025 and a five-year low for these applicants, according to the National Resident Matching Program. 

6. An April 23 report from Trilliant Health found that despite a yearslong growth in medical school enrollments and primary care residency slots, these residencies are increasingly going unfilled. Since 2012, U.S. medical residency positions increased 65.6%. For the 2026 Match, more than 40,000 medical school graduates secured a residency spot for 2026. While primary care specialties accounted for about half of these placements (approximately 20,700), “primary care residencies were disproportionately unfilled in 2026,” Trilliant found. “Family medicine went 16.4% unfilled, followed by pediatrics and internal medicine, 5.6% and 4.6%, respectively.” 

7. Only 47% of physicians said they would still choose medicine again under the new federal loan cap policy, 27% said they would not choose medicine again and 26% were unsure, according to new data from Panacea Financial shared with Becker’s. Among those paying down debt, 88% identified student loans as the primary burden. 

8. Burnout among physicians is continuing to decline, but three specialties — emergency medicine, urological surgery and hematology/oncology —  still have a burnout rate of more than 49%, an American Medical Association survey found. In 2025, 41.9% of physicians reported at least one symptom of burnout, down from 43.2% in 2024. 

9. Radiology and orthopedics tied for the specialties that lead to the highest net worth, with 39% of providers in those specialties having a net worth over $5 million, an April 24 Medscape report found.

The post The current state of the physician workforce: 9 notes appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Orthopedics and plastic surgery have traded the top two spots in Medscape’s annual Physician Compensation Report every year since 2021, and both specialties have seen compensation climb by more than $80,000 over that span. 

Orthopedic surgeons now command an average of $611,000 annually, up 20% from five years ago, while plastic surgeons earn $554,000. 

2025

• Orthopedics and orthopedic surgery: $611,000
• Cardiology: $575,000
• Radiology: $571,000
• Plastic surgery: $554,000
• Anesthesiology: $543,000
• Urology: $535,000
• Gastroenterology: $530,000
• Otolaryngology: $508,000
• Oncology and hematology: $464,000
• Dermatology: $448,000

2024

• Orthopedic and orthopedic surgery: $543,000 
• Radiology: $520,000 
• Plastic surgery: $516,000
• Cardiology: $506,000
• Anesthesiology: $499,000
• Gastroenterology: $495,000
• Urology: $485,000  
• Otolaryngology: $473,000
• Oncology and hematology: $452,000
• Dermatology: $424,000

2023

• Orthopedics (includes orthopedics and orthopedic surgery): $558,000
• Plastic surgery: $536,000
• Cardiology: $525,000
• Urology: $515,000
• Gastroenterology: $512,000
• Radiology: $498,000
• Dermatology: $479,000
• Anesthesiology: $472,000
• Oncology (includes hematology and oncology): $464,000

2022

• Plastic surgery: $576,000 
• Orthopedics: $557,000 
• Cardiology: $490,000 
• Otolaryngology: $469,000
• Urology: $461,000 
• Gastroenterology: $453,000 
• Dermatology: $438,000 
• Radiology: $437,000 
• Ophthalmology: $417,000 

2021

• Plastic surgery: $526,000
• Orthopedics and orthopedic surgery: $511,000
• Cardiology: $459,000
• Urology: $427,000
• Otolaryngology: $417,000
• Radiology: $413,000
• Gastroenterology: $406,000
• Oncology: $403,000
• Dermatology: $394,000
• Ophthalmology: $379,000

The post The 10 highest-paying physician specialties in the last 5 years appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

As da Vinci surgery platforms evolve into data-rich, digital ecosystems, health systems are discovering that the real value isn’t just in the operating room — it’s in what the technology can teach.

During a featured session at Becker’s 16th Annual Meeting, Ankit Patel, MD, professor of surgery at Emory University School of Medicine and chief of surgery at Emory Saint Joseph’s Hospital (Atlanta), where he also leads robotic surgical education, shared how the organization has moved from simply performing da Vinci surgery cases to building a comprehensive digital surgical program.

Note: Quotes have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

1. Upgrading the fleet exposed hidden costs and unexpected savings

Emory was among the last academic centers in the country to upgrade its da Vinci surgery fleet, acquiring its first da Vinci Xi in 2019 — five years after launch. Dr. Patel said the delay cost the health system competitive standing and hurt recruitment at every level.

When da Vinci 5 arrived, piloting a single unit revealed something the system hadn’t anticipated: da Vinci surgery cases required fewer instruments, less redundant equipment and simpler sterile processing than laparoscopic alternatives. Costs that had never been carefully tracked suddenly became visible.

“When something breaks, a purchase order gets cut and that equipment gets replaced without really looking into it,” Dr. Patel said. The shift also reduced the need for surgical first assistants in certain cases, freeing staff to be deployed elsewhere — a downstream efficiency the team hadn’t planned for but is now actively tracking for broader standardization.

2. Digital tools are transforming how surgeons are trained and evaluated

Dr. Patel noted that for decades, surgical credentialing relied on case volume with no objective measure of skill. Da Vinci 5’s integrated simulator changes that, offering a structured pathway from basic safety tasks to procedure-specific proficiency. Emory’s fleet has logged more than 200,000 simulator hours, and future versions will analyze prior case performance to recommend targeted exercises automatically.

Equally significant is instant video replay. Where laparoscopic footage once took days to process, da Vinci surgery case video is now accessible within minutes of closing. Residents receive same-day feedback and can apply corrections to their next case immediately, a shift that Emory’s preliminary data suggests is compressing learning curves and accelerating skill transfer across procedure types.

Desktop analytics allow faculty to compare a trainee’s instrument positioning and efficiency across multiple cases in real time, replacing the guesswork that characterized training for generations. “We couldn’t do this before,” Dr. Patel said. “This has been on our wish list for 20 to 30 years.”

3. Telepresence is beginning to reshape how expertise moves across a health system

Emory operates 11 hospitals, and da Vinci 5’s telepresence capability is designed to extend senior surgical expertise to satellite facilities without moving the surgeon or the patient. Dr. Patel currently uses it to observe cases remotely from his clinic, logging in via a text prompt in under 20 seconds. The longer-term vision is enabling satellite-site surgeons to handle higher-complexity cases with remote senior support: reducing interfacility transfers, freeing capacity at the main hub and expanding access to da Vinci surgery across the system.

Physician compensation for remote consultation remains an open regulatory question, but Dr. Patel said Emory is actively working through how to structure the capability across its system. For same-specialty consultations, billing requirements are less of a barrier, making that a natural starting point. “There’s a lot of interfacility transfers we can decrease — that ultimately ends up in savings,” he said.

The post How Emory is using da Vinci digital surgery tools to train the next generation: 3 takeaways appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

In honor of National Nurses Month in May and National Nurses Week (May 6-12), hospitals and health systems are recognizing nurses across the country. 

This year, the American Nurses Association is again highlighting “The Power of Nurses” as its National Nurses Week theme.

Here are some stats to know about nurses in 2026:

1. For the 24th consecutive year, nurses have ranked as healthcare’s most trusted profession. 

2. A March 26 American Nurses Enterprise-commissioned survey found that adjusting minimum wages for competitive compensation, as well as investments in safety, well-being, recruitment and retention, had a strong positive association with a hospital’s operating margin.

3. A Feb. 9 Philadelphia-based University of Pennsylvania survey found the majority of nurses who left bedside roles in recent years are willing to return, and adequate staffing levels are the factor that would reattract them.

4. Across the country, universities and health systems are opening and expanding nursing programs to meet student demand. However, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing found more than 65,000 qualified applicants were turned away in the most recent academic year — largely due to a shortage of nursing faculty. 

Becker’s collected messages of appreciation from hospital and health system leaders across the U.S. 

Note: Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Ashley Carlucci, DNP, RN. Chief Nursing Executive for Allegheny Health Network (Pittsburgh): As we celebrate Nurses Week, I want to pause and thank nurses for the leadership, compassion and expertise they bring to patients, families and communities every single day. Nursing sits at the center of care delivery, anchored in human caring, clinical excellence and a deep responsibility to those we serve.

Across every setting, nurses lead with courage and heart, often in moments that matter most. Your voice, judgment and presence continue to shape outcomes, elevate the care experience and advance the profession. Thank you for what you do, for who you are, and for the difference you make, today and always.

Melinda Cooling, DNP. Chief Nurse and Advanced Practice Provider Executive for OSF HealthCare (Peoria, Ill.): I am honored to share my appreciation for our OSF nurses during National Nurses Week. Each day, our nurses make a profound difference in the lives of patients, families and the communities we serve. Nursing is so much more than a profession, it is truly a calling. Our OSF Sisters remind us that everyone is here for a reason and with intention, and that purpose is deeply rooted in compassion, clinical expertise, advocacy and a commitment to providing safe care.

Whether at the bedside, in a clinic, at home or in the boardroom, the presence of our nurses shapes experiences and safety in ways that no metric can fully capture. Patients may not always remember the details of their care, but they always remember how they were treated, with kindness, empathy and respect. This lasting impact often comes from a reassuring word, attentive listening, strong advocacy, or the humility of the care team, and it is the very heart of nursing that extends far beyond clinical moments.

During Nurses Week, I want to express my deep gratitude for your expertise, courage and dedication. You are leaders every day, advancing our mission to deliver safe, compassionate care to every patient, every time. Thank you for being an OSF nurse and for everything you do!

Meredith Foxx, MSN, APRN. Senior Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer of Cleveland Clinic: In honor of National Nurses Week, I want to extend my heartfelt gratitude to nurses across the country, and especially to our nurses at Cleveland Clinic, for the care, compassion and dedication you bring to your work every day. At Cleveland Clinic, nurses are the steady presence at the heart of care, bringing skill, empathy and humanity to every patient and every family in every moment that matters.

I have the privilege of seeing your impact firsthand. You listen closely, anticipate needs and advocate to ensure every patient feels safe, informed and respected. Over the past year, Cleveland Clinic nurses have led meaningful improvements in patient safety, strengthened communication across teams and translated evidence into practice in even the most complex situations. Just as important is the way you show up for one another.

You mentor colleagues, share knowledge and build strong, supportive teams grounded in professionalism and trust. Nursing is more than a profession. It is a calling rooted in service and compassion. Thank you for the countless ways you make a difference each day, including the moments that often go unseen. It is truly an honor to work alongside Cleveland Clinic nurses and to witness the difference you make for our patients, families and communities.

Peggy Norton-Rosko, DNP, RN. Senior Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer at Trinity Health (Livonia, Mich.): Across every role and care setting, our nurses make an immense impact every day through their knowledge, compassion and steady presence. They blend clinical expertise and human connection, caring for patients and families while also supporting and learning from one another. Our nurses are critical to driving meaningful progress and ensuring we continue to meet the changing needs of our communities.

To our Trinity Health nurses, thank you for the dedication and pride you bring to your work every day. The care you provide reflects not only clinical excellence, but the heart of who we are as an organization. Your impact extends far beyond the walls of our facilities, and it is an honor to serve alongside you. During this Nurses Month, and all year long, I share my heartfelt gratitude for all the ways our nurses bring healing and hope to those we serve.

Heather Resseger, DNP, RN. Senior Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer at NorthBay Health (Fairfield Calif.): To our NorthBay Health nursing team: Thank you for the extraordinary care you provide each and every day. The Power of Nurses is evident in every patient interaction, every moment of compassion and every life you touch. Your unwavering commitment not only shapes the patient experience but drives the clinical excellence that defines who we are as an organization. I am incredibly proud that we represent the very best of nursing through measurable patient outcomes and our achievement of Magnet with Distinction recognition — a testament to the strength, skill and dedication you bring to your practice.

I am deeply grateful for your resilience and commitment as we continue to grow and evolve to meet the needs of those we serve. As we expand access to care across Northern California, you remain at the center of improving outcomes and advancing the health of our communities. It is truly an honor to celebrate you and to witness the profound impact you make every day through the power of nursing excellence.

Betty Jo Rocchio, DNP, RN. Executive Vice President and Chief Nurse Executive at Advocate Health (Charlotte, N.C.): I still remember early in my nursing career caring for a patient facing a difficult cancer diagnosis. They were overwhelmed — trying to absorb new information, new fears and a future that suddenly felt uncertain. I couldn’t cure them, but I could care for them. I could sit at eye level, explain what was happening in plain language, hold a hand a little longer, and make sure their voice didn’t get lost in the rush of the day. When they thanked me for what I thought were “small” things, it reminded me that nursing is, at its heart, a promise: to show up with skill, courage and humanity when someone needs it most.

That promise is alive in you. To nurses everywhere — in hospitals and clinics, operating rooms, schools and homes — you step into life’s most vulnerable moments and bring expertise, calm and connection. You combine skill and calm to help patients feel safe in unfamiliar moments. You assess, prioritize and intervene with expertise that changes the course of care. You notice the small signs that make a big difference. You advocate, you teach, you lead and you keep going — always with purpose. During Nurses Week, I want to say what our patients feel every day: thank you. Thank you for choosing this profession, for the compassion you give so freely and for the strength you lend to every person and community you serve.

Brenda Rocha, DNP, RN. Chief Nursing Officer at Baystate Medical Center, Baystate Health (Springfield, Mass.): To my highly esteemed nurses, I salute and honor you with deep appreciation for your commitment to such an extraordinary profession. Nursing remains one of the most respected and trusted calling in the world, and each of you exemplifies why. Thank you for your smiles that bring comfort, your empowered voices that advocate fiercely, your courageous spirit in the face of challenge and your endless passion. The impact you make is felt in every moment of care, whether through a simple touch or an unspoken word.

Your resilience is nothing short of inspiring, and your spirit of inquiry continues to push the boundaries of what is possible, improving outcomes and transforming lives. I am deeply honored to lead you, to learn from you, and to walk beside you in this meaningful work. You are the heart of healing, the voice of hope and the embodiment of excellence in action. Thank you, for all that you are and all that you give. Happy Nurses Week.

Robert Rose, DNP, RN. Senior Vice President of Nursing and Chief Nursing Officer at Ascension (St. Louis): Our Ascension Mission is not just a statement; it is a tangible reality made possible by your commitment to be present for others and to ensure the most vulnerable receive the care they need. During National Nurses Week, we celebrate the incredible strength and dedication of our Ascension nurses. The American Nurses Association’s theme, “The Power of Nursing,” deeply represents us, as it is lived out every day through the extraordinary care you deliver to our families, patients, and the communities we serve. Your dedication and commitment make our Ascension Mission a living reality, ensuring the most vulnerable receive the care they need.

We recognize that nursing is a meaningful vocation — centered on serving humanity and ministering to people during some of the most difficult times of their lives. Whether you are impacting a patient’s care, promoting healing or working tirelessly to remove barriers so families can be reunited, your impact is immeasurable. Thank you for everything you do to care for our patients and families, and for being the hands and heart of Ascension. I am proud to practice alongside you!

Kathleen Sanford, RN. Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer of CommonSpirit Health (Chicago): As we celebrate National Nurses Week, I reflect on the work we did five years ago to develop the first strategic plan for nursing at CommonSpirit Health. At that time, we created five different pins to celebrate nursing, each engraved with words describing what it means to be a nurse at CommonSpirit. The words we chose to honor the skills and vision that nurses bring to care for patients and communities are applicable across our profession:

• Head, heart and hands: You use your head, your heart and your hands to provide care for patients.
• Intellect with love: This is a reminder that we are bright, science-focused professionals who always practice with love.
• Compassion and skill: No matter how skilled you are, in healthcare you must also have compassion, and that describes nurses perfectly. 
• Art and science: As we know, nursing is both an art and a science. 
• Collegiality and leadership: Collegiality defines the teamwork and spirit of our profession, while leadership reflects the vital role that nurses play in shaping patient care and driving healthcare innovation forward.

To all nurses: Thank you for choosing this profession and for using your talents to make a difference. Most of all, thank you for being united in the purpose and passion of caring for patients.

Janet Tomcavage, MSN, RN. Executive Vice President and Chief Nursing Executive for Geisinger (Danville, Pa.): Nurses are the steady heart of healthcare — showing up every day with skill, compassion and resilience. You care for patients at their most vulnerable moments, listening closely, advocating fiercely, and delivering expert care with humanity and dignity. Your ability to combine clinical excellence with genuine empathy makes a lasting difference not only in outcomes, but in how patients and families experience care.

Thank you for the extraordinary work you do, often under intense situations with higher acuity needs. Your dedication, teamwork and courage lift entire communities and inspire everyone around you. Healthcare is stronger because of you, and your impact reaches far beyond the bedside into our ambulatory and home settings. We are deeply grateful for all that you do — today and every day.

Syl Trepanier, DNP, RN. Chief Nurse Executive at Providence (Renton, Wash.): It is with immense gratitude and pride that I thank each and every nurse across the Providence family of organizations. Thank you for your dedication to our patients, to the nursing profession, to our communities and to each other. I know what you do is not easy. The long hours, the difficult decisions, the sometimes-heartbreaking moments. You are appreciated, you are loved and valued. Happy Nurses Week.

Anne Marie Watkins, DNP, RN. Chief Nursing Executive and Senior Vice President at UCI Health (Irvine, Calif.): During Nurses Week, we celebrate the compassion, expertise, courage and leadership that nurses bring to every patient interaction and every corner of healthcare. Across UCI Health, I am deeply grateful for our nurses who heal, advocate, innovate and lead with both skill and heart. Whether at the bedside, in our clinics, classrooms, research settings or leadership roles, your impact is profound and far-reaching. Thank you for the extraordinary difference you make for our patients, families and communities each day.

The post 12 hospital executives’ thank-you notes to nurses appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

AI was front and center during recent earnings calls for UnitedHealth Group and Elevance Health, as leaders discussed their companies’ respective $1.5 billion and $1 billion tech investments. Both organizations, along with Centene, made Fortune‘s top companies for AI adoption in 2025, as well.

Payers have been experimenting with internal and member-facing capabilities, while grappling with health system AI use, as well. As insurers build upon their substantial investments and weigh how humans can stay “in the loop,” here is where that money is actually going.

Member navigation and digital experience

From chatbots to provider-matching tools, major insurers have been diving into use cases that aim to drive member experience.

Several major insurers — including UnitedHealthcare, Elevance, Aetna and Cigna — have launched virtual assistants for members. By the end of 2026, more than 20 million UnitedHealthcare members should have access to generative AI virtual assistant Avery. Elevance’s virtual assistant reached 22 million commercial members, and the company planned to broaden the assistant’s reach to Medicare. Aetna said it would roll out voice enablement with its generative AI assistant in early 2026. 

Along with an AI-powered chatbot, Cigna also launched a “proprietary” provider-matching tool and redesigned its real-time cost-tracking resource, which breaks down deductibles, out-of-pocket costs and integrated bill payments. A claim submission feature allows members to upload bills, autofills details and fields updates. Those with employer-sponsored coverage can also access plan selection support to get a sense of healthcare costs and available providers.

Prior authorization and claims processing

As carriers double down on their commitment to reducing prior authorization, AI has become one means of doing so. The vast majority of surveyed health plan executives, 93%, expect AI to add value by automating prior authorizations, according to recent Deloitte research.

During Elevance’s latest earnings call, President and CEO Gail Boudreaux said the company’s Health OS platform and other AI tools have cut prior authorizations by almost 70%. Under Carelon, Health OS unifies provider data, lab results and pharmacy information, filling gaps that could otherwise prompt a denial. More than 60,000 Elevance associates can access this technology.

Internal automation 

Across insurers of all sizes, internal automation has been a priority with AI deployment. Last year, former UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty said the company directed 26 million customer calls with AI agents and anticipated that AI would direct more than half of these calls by 2026.

Earlier this year, Humana deepened its relationship with Google Cloud to launch its AI-enabled Agent Assist, which aims to accelerate care-support personnel activities.

Beyond direct member interactions, Elevance employees use AI toolkit Spark to streamline workflows. The features help with manual task automation, including document analysis and contract processing. 

Clinical decisionmaking and solutions

Recently, Optum’s Value Connect brought together clinical, operational and financial data into a single system for payers and providers in value-based arrangements. The platform can flag which members may need intervention. This year, Optum reported customers had 29% fewer emergency room visits, 28% fewer preventable hospital readmissions and more than a 20% improvement in care gap closure. Elevance’s Health OS also strives to bridge interoperability gaps.

Industry group AHIP recently shared how payers are putting AI to use in predictive risk modeling and research support to assist with care management.

The post 5 ways insurers are betting big on AI appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

With 2026 midterm elections around the corner, nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults are concerned about affording healthcare, according to an April 29 KFF poll.

The survey canvassed 1,343 U.S. adults, of whom 1,107 were registered to vote.

Here are six notes from the poll:

1. The share of adults concerned about healthcare affordability parallels the amount of U.S. adults worried about gas and transportation costs, which is also 64%.

2. When asked about steps health insurers could take, nearly one-half of adults said lowering out-of-pocket costs would be their top priority. Twenty-two percent said eliminating prior authorization, and 12% said more flexibility with choosing providers.

3. Roughly 9 out of 10 voters said healthcare costs will influence their approach to 2026 midterms. The majority of Democrats and independents said these costs will inform which party’s candidate they support.

4. Thirty-seven percent of voters trust the Democratic party on healthcare costs, whereas only 26% believe in the Republican party’s ability to address the issue. Less than half of voters support the Trump administration’s approaches to healthcare and prescription drug costs.

5. However, Republicans are more trusted than Democrats when it comes to addressing fraud and waste in government health programs.

6. Many voters do not trust either party on most healthcare-related issues, though.

The post 64% of Americans worry about healthcare costs: 6 notes appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Rural healthcare is at an inflection point. Hospitals are closing or scaling back essential services. Labor and delivery units are disappearing. Rural operating rooms sit idle not due to a lack of patients, but to a shortage of clinicians. At the same time, policymakers are advancing initiatives like the President’s Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP), aimed at rethinking how care is delivered in rural communities.

This is a moment for bold thinking. But transformation cannot succeed if outdated regulatory barriers remain. While the RHTP has made progress by easing restrictions on nurse practitioners and physician assistants, significant barriers persist for specialized providers like nurse anesthetists.

If we are serious about strengthening rural healthcare, policy should be assessed through a simple framework: Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Enhanced Access.

Effectiveness: Proven Care, Proven Outcomes

Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists (CRNAs) have safely delivered anesthesia care for more than a century. In many rural hospitals, they are the primary and many times, the only anesthesia professionals.

The evidence is clear: anesthesia care delivered by CRNAs is safe, high-quality, and comparable to other delivery models. This is not a new workforce. CRNAs are a mature, well-established profession with a long track record of safety across all practice settings, including the most resource-constrained environments.

When access to anesthesia determines whether a hospital can sustain surgical, obstetric, or emergency services, effective policy must ensure that care can actually be delivered.

Efficiency: Lower Costs, Sustainable Systems

Rural hospitals face extraordinary financial pressure. Thin margins, workforce shortages, and declining reimbursement make every operational decision high-stakes.

CRNAs are the most cost-efficient solution to sustain anesthesia services. Allowing them to practice to the full extent of their licensure enables high-quality care while better managing labor costs – often the single largest expense hospitals face.

By contrast, unnecessary supervision adds cost and administrative complexity without improving outcomes. These requirements can delay care, limit staffing flexibility, and even force service line closures. Medicare’s physician supervision requirement, which persists despite opt-out policies in half of states and no supervision requirement in the laws of 45 states, often results in non-anesthesia-trained physicians “supervising” highly-trained anesthesia professionals. Hospitals are then left with two poor options: reduced access to anesthesia services or adoption of significantly more expensive care models that further strain fragile finances.

If rural health transformation is meant to create reliable systems of care, removing artificial  barriers should be a shared priority.

Enhanced Access: Providing Care Where It’s Needed Most

Access to healthcare is often discussed in abstract. In rural communities, it is more straightforward: access is everything.

When an expecting mother must travel hours for a C-section, a farmer delays surgery, or a child’s emergency care is limited by anesthesia availability, the system is not delivering.

CRNAs are uniquely positioned to address this: they are more likely to practice in rural and underserved areas and already serve as the backbone of anesthesia delivery in many of these communities.

Policies that restrict their ability to practice fully directly reduce access; policies that empower them expand access immediately.

Looking Ahead: A Workforce Reality We Can’t Ignore

The nation faces a growing shortage of physician anesthesiologists. Training pipelines have not kept pace, and geographic maldistribution continues to widen gaps, especially in rural areas with aging populations.

In contrast, the number of CRNAs is growing steadily, with strong representation in rural America and a demonstrated willingness to serve where need is greatest.

This is not a future concern, it is a present reality. Policymakers can either align regulations with workforce trends, now or confront worsening consequences later. Delays carry real risk, as rural hospital closures are often permanent.

Addressing the Safety Argument

Opposition to full scope of practice for CRNAs is often framed around patient safety. That argument does not withstand scrutiny. More than a century of clinical practice, supported by decades of research, shows no credible evidence of compromised safety. These arguments persist not because of data, but because of longstanding professional and economic interests.

Healthcare policy should be guided by evidence and patient needs, not protectionism.

A Clear Opportunity 

The RHTP represents an opportunity to modernize care delivery in underserved communities. Meaningful transformation should:

• Remove unnecessary barriers limiting CRNA practice
• Align scope-of-practice policy with licensure and outcomes
• Prioritize workforce models that improve access and reduce costs
• Support rural hospitals with flexible, evidence-based staffing solutions

This is not about choosing one provider over another. It is about ensuring access to safe, timely, and affordable care, regardless of geography.

Conclusion

Rural healthcare does not need more complexity. It needs practical solutions grounded in reality.

Applying the framework of effectiveness, efficiency, and enhanced access leads to a clear conclusion: allowing CRNAs to practice to the full extent of their licensure is one of the most immediate, impactful steps available to stabilize rural healthcare.

The tools already exist. The question is whether we are willing to use them.

Tracy Young, MS, MBA, CRNA, is a healthcare executive and Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist who leads large‑scale anesthesia operations as Chief Operating Officer of Essential Anesthesia Services. He currently serves as President‑Elect of the American Association of Nurse Anesthesiology.

The post Rural Health Transformation Should Mean Removing Barriers—Not Reinforcing Them appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Medical liability insurance premiums increased nationwide for the seventh consecutive year in 2025, marking the longest sustained upward trend since the early 2000s, according to new research from the American Medical Association.

AMA published two policy research reports on medical liability April 27. The first analyzes annual changes in medical liability insurance premiums between 2016 and 2025. The second examines medical liability claim frequency among patient care physicians in the U.S. between 2016 and 2024.

“Although there was a continued rise in MPL premiums over the past seven years, the severity and the magnitude of this rise pale in comparison to the hard market in the early 2000s,” Allen Hardiman, PhD, AMA’s lead economist, wrote in the first report. “Nevertheless, if this upward trajectory continues to worsen in the future, it could lead to a negative impact on patients’ access to care.”

A hard market refers to a period marked by significant premium increases, stricter underwriting and reduced coverage availability.

Six things to know:

1. The share of medical liability premiums that increased year-over-year jumped from 13.7% in 2018 to 39.9% in 2025.

2. Last year, physicians in 36 states reported at least one premium increase. Physicians in 11 states had at least one premium increase by 10% or more.

3. Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Florida, Illinois and New York saw the largest increases between 2024 and 2025. California remained an outlier with significantly lower premiums, as the state has a cap on non-economic damages.

4. Premiums were highest for OB/GYN and general surgery, reflecting greater liability exposure in those specialties. 

5. Overall, 28.7% of physicians reported being sued during their careers in 2024, down from 34% in 2016. 

6. Physicians 55 and older were more likely to be sued (45.2%) compared to those under 45 (11%). Among OB/GYNs and general surgeons 55 and older, nearly three in four had faced at least one claim in their careers.

The post Medical liability premiums rise for 7th year: 6 things to know appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

New Mexico is the most at-risk state for drug use, according to an April 29 ranking from personal finance website WalletHub.

The list was created to determine where drug use is most pronounced and which areas are most at risk by comparing the 50 states and Washington, D.C. across 20 metrics in three categories: drug use and addiction, law enforcement and drug health issues and rehabilitation.

Metrics included overdose deaths per capita and substance abuse treatment facilities per 100,000 people using illicit drugs. WalletHub calculated each state’s weighted average across all metrics to determine its overall score, with the state ranked No. 1 having the most significant drug problem based on the data analyzed.

The U.S. saw the largest decrease in drug overdose death rates ever recorded in 2024, exceeding the record set in 2018. The rate declined 26.2% between 2023 and 2023, from 31.3 to 23.1 per 100,000, according to CDC data. A separate CDC report found Vermont, Rhode Island and New York had the largest decreases in predicted drug overdose deaths between August 2024 and August 2025.

Here are the 10 states most and least at risk for drug use, per WalletHub:

10 most

1. New Mexico

2. Arkansas

3. Alaska

4. Nevada

5. Missouri

6. West Virginia

7. Colorado

8. Washington, D.C.

9. Oklahoma

10. Mississippi

10 least

42. Nebraska

43. Connecticut

44. Hawaii

45. Ohio

46. Virginia

47. Iowa

48. Maryland

49. Minnesota

50. Florida

51. Utah

The post 10 states with most, least drug use appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

As part of a goal to return 10 million clinical hours to clinicians by 2028, Philadelphia-based Jefferson Health is piloting an ambient AI documentation tool for nursing units — a largely unprecedented goal for health system AI projects. 

The system operates 32 hospital campuses and approximately 700 care sites throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In September, the organization announced the time-saving plan, which also broadly aims to improve patient care and outcomes, cut administrative burden and enhance operational efficiency.

Jefferson Health President Baligh Yehia, MD, told Becker’s the system wants to save each clinician an average of one hour of administrative work per day, which adds up to 10 million hours that can be used for patient-facing care. The saved time is measured through signal data, which are the AI tool logs, as well as in-person observation to verify the data.

An early aspect of this project featured ambient listening technology available to Jefferson’s physicians, advanced practice providers and physical therapists working in specific settings, including ambulatory sites. 

So far, the system has logged about 350,000 hours, or 3.5%, thanks to the ambient technology, according to Colleen Mallozzi, RN, senior vice president and chief nursing informatics officer at Jefferson Health. 

Ms. Mallozzi and Dr. Yehia told Becker’s they expect other AI-focused technologies, including a documentation tool that could be made available to its 14,000 nurses and other staff, will expedite the system’s progress toward 10 million hours. 

The ambient AI pilot for nurses

Based on the success of physicians using ambient listening technology for documentation, Jefferson is taking a similar — but not identical — approach for nurses. 

Physicians document their work through treatment decisions and care plans in EHRs; while nurses document in standardized flow sheets with drop-down menus and checklists. That fundamental difference influenced how Jefferson is testing ambient AI for nursing. 

At three nursing units at Abington (Pa.) Hospital, a 667-bed regional referral and teaching hospital, care teams are piloting ambient AI technology. The tool translates spoken language into structured flow sheet documentation. 

After gaining a patient’s consent, the nurses, patient care technicians, patient care coordinators and nurse managers on those three units verbalize their assessments. The ambient technology ingests the care conversations and delivers a structured output for nursing flow sheets. 

The first hurdle for Jefferson? Nurses do not always verbally communicate what they are doing. 

“Imagine if you had to go throughout your day just verbalizing everything you were doing. How awkward would that be?” Ms. Mallozzi said. “Nurses are used to quietly going about their assessments, doing three different tasks at once, and now they have to verbalize it. So this was a big change. There’s an awkwardness to get over, to figure out how to have that conversational care with your patients and verbalize some of the things you were doing.”

‘We have camps’: The adoption challenge

About 30% of nurses are hesitant to use the technology, Ms. Mallozzi said.

Jefferson hosted a panel discussion about the technology April 22 for about 400 nurse leaders to query staff members who are taking part in the pilot. Common concerns raised by staff included legal ramifications, environmental effects, potential over-reliance and feeling like they are “performing” for the AI rather than focusing on the patient. 

She said newer-to-practice nurses are more hesitant to verbalize their assessments, likely because they are “still getting their feet grounded in their practice.” 

“It’s been a little polarizing. We have camps,” Ms. Mallozzi said, adding that Jefferson plans to make the model opt-in after the pilot, similar to the rollout for the physicians’ ambient documentation tool. 

Results so far

The pilot is in its early stages, so nursing-specific outcomes are still emerging. However, Ms. Mallozzi said the ambient tool is changing the way nurses work. 

“The technology is amazing, but this is about transforming the way that nurses practice, the way that they engage with their patients: to verbalize their care,” Ms. Mallozzi said. “It’s incredible, because it’s helpful for the patients to understand what you’re going through, what you’re thinking through, that critical thinking aspect.”

She raised an unexpected benefit: the added educational value for nursing students at the teaching hospital. Nursing students do not have to guess at the clinical reasoning behind their supervisors’ decisions — the verbalization requirement makes that thinking explicit and audible in real time.

For documentation, Jefferson Health leaders are predicting similar results from its ambient tool for physicians and APPs. That tool has decreased time spent on EHRs by about 17%, as well as 16% less time spent on charts outside of work — sometimes called “pajama time” — and 40% less time to close a chart, Dr. Yehia said. 

On a larger scale, he said Jefferson is saving clinicians an average of 15 to 20 minutes per day. 

Jefferson’s broader AI strategy and governance structure

The system has identified and implemented more than 100 AI-powered solutions, including ones focused on care delivery, revenue cycle operations and back-office tasks. 

Each idea and technology is funneled through Jefferson Health’s AI Center for Excellence, which launched in 2022. A key component of the system’s AI governance structure is usability. 

“The biggest underline for me is this [AI technology] is being implemented by our clinical staff, for them and by them,” Ms. Mallozzi said. “We aren’t just making broad stroke decisions for what they’re going to use. … We run [technology] by them, we let them poke holes in it and then we pilot it with them.”

If an AI tool does not click with clinicians, it does not make it to a systemwide launch, she said. 

Jefferson’s near-future AI plans include agentic technologies, such as voice agents for follow-up phone calls and appointment scheduling. 

We are not “implementing technology for the sake of implementing technology,” Ms. Mallozzi said. “It truly is grounded in returning time to care: care for yourself, care for your patients. I think it’s really important that we look at, are you getting time to take a breath after a complex patient experience or a death of a patient? Are you getting time to take your lunch? The time may be given back for that bedside care and time with patients, but if our clinicians are caring for themselves, they’re going to be better caregivers for other individuals as well.”

The post Can ambient AI work for nurses? Jefferson Health is finding out appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

The majority of nurses working in long-term care said they are happy in their position, but 73.8% have reported their job has become more difficult in the last 18 months, a recent American Association of Post-Acute Care Nursing survey found.

The survey of nearly 500 nurses and certified nurse aides, conducted in November, asked about their perspective on drivers of job satisfaction and challenges in their jobs, according to an April 27 association news release. 

Here are three survey findings:

1. The most important factors keeping nurses in their jobs are meaningful relationships with residents (31%), a strong sense of purpose (28%) and team and work culture (15%).

2. The top contributors to dissatisfaction and burnout are increasing regulatory burden (16%), staffing shortages (12.5%) and leadership gaps (7%).

3. Nurses are more likely to stay in a position that is supported by a strong work culture with a reinforced sense of purpose and flexibility. A nurse’s decision to stay or leave is also closely tied to their relationship with their supervisor.

The post What’s retaining nurses in long-term care appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Six healthcare organizations — including one health system — have been recognized on LinkedIn’s list of the 50 best U.S. employers to grow careers.

The LinkedIn Top Companies 2026 list features organizations that provide employees with skill-building and advancement opportunities, according to an April 28 LinkedIn News post. It is based on LinkedIn data and evaluates companies on key markers of career progression, such as how employees develop new skills and how quickly they advance within an organization.

Eligible companies had 5,000 or more global employees, with at least 500 in the U.S., as of Dec. 31. Attrition could be no higher than 10%, and companies could not have layoffs of 10% or more over the methodology period of Jan. 1, 2025, through Dec. 31.

Here are the healthcare organizations featured, along with their rank out of 50 and headquarters city:

11. CVS Health (Woonsocket, R.I.)

13. UnitedHealth Group (Eden Prairie, Minn.)

24. Eli Lilly and Co. (Indianapolis)

28. Kaiser Permanente (Oakland, Calif.)

30. Roche (San Francisco)

41. Abbott (Abbott Park, Ill.)

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Physicians are increasingly uncertain if their career choice was worth the debt they took on for training — and some of them would not choose medicine again under new federal caps on student loans, according to new data from Panacea Financial shared with Becker’s.

The survey included responses from 270 physicians and was conducted in early 2026. 

Here are six takeaways from the survey:

1. Only 47% of physicians said they would still choose medicine again under the new federal loan cap policy. Another 27% said they would not choose medicine again, while 26% were unsure. 

2. Paying of debt was the single most common financial priority named by respondents, cited by 79% as their top goal. 

3. Debt repayment ranked above retirement savings, homebuying and investing as priorities. Among those paying down debt, 88% identified student loans as the primary burden.

4. Of physicians who said they struggle to balance loan repayment with other financial goals, 37% were already in practice, a sign that higher attending salaries do not automatically resolve debt-driven financial stress.

5. Financial confidence among physicians also remains low. On a five-point scale, 71$ of respondents rated their financial confidence as a 3 or below. physicians actively in practice averaged just 3.27 out of 5, and medical students averaged 2.33, with residents and fellows averaging 2.63. 

6. Forty-six percent of respondents said they do not fully understand their loan repayment, forgiveness or refinancing options. 

The post The federal policy pushing physicians out of medicine appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Hospitals are bracing for a cascade of financial pressures as rising insurance costs, Medicaid restrictions and a growing number of uninsured patients threaten to reshape patient behavior and erode margins in the years ahead, according to a new Moody’s Healthcare Quarterly report.

From declining elective procedure volumes to worsening payer mix and ballooning bad debt, health system leaders face a challenging landscape that could last through 2027 and beyond.

Here are 10 predictions for health system executives.

1. The increasing costs of health insurance and out-of-pocket expenses will likely change patient behavior in the coming years. Hospital leaders can expect lower patient volumes, especially for “profitable elective procedures,” according to Moody’s, which will negatively affect financial performance.

2. Many hospital executives will see a worse payer mix as fewer patients use commercial insurance and Medicaid eligibility is restricted. They’ll likely experience lower reimbursement for services and higher uncompensated care with more uninsured patients.

“These effects will likely be gradual and varied, having a greater effect on hospitals located in certain states or with higher exposure to certain demographic groups,” the report notes. “The impact on margins will likely be muted in 2026, with the potential for more margin erosion ahead.”

3. The number of uninsured patients will likely increase due to higher premiums – which are rising 6% to 7% in 2026 for employer-sponsored plans – and subsidy cuts for ACA plans. Unemployment is also on the rise and with it, a drop in employer-sponsored plans.

4. Medicaid restrictions may “significantly decrease the number of people covered,” especially in states with Medicaid expansion. Work requirements expected to take effect next year will further limit access. Hospitals can expect fewer Medicaid-covered patients and more resources spent on administrative work and redetermination, according to the report.

“There is also the potential for revenue losses due to provider payment caps and reductions in the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP), the formula used to determine how much of a state’s Medicaid costs are paid by the federal government,” the report notes.

5. Bad debt will likely increase as hospitals see lower patient volumes, more uninsured patients and pass more costs on to patients.

6. Hospitals may report a decline in elective surgery as patients lose health insurance or take on high deductible plans, opting to forgo care until it’s life threatening. Fewer high-dollar elective procedures would negatively affect cash flow, according to the report.

7. Uninsured patients and patients with limited access to healthcare may also decide to forgo preventative care and routine visits, which would lead to higher emergency room traffic. “This will further cut into hospitals’ profit margins,” according to the report.

8. Hospitals may see less reimbursement for services performed after payer mix shifts. “We estimate that a one percentage-point shift in payor mix from commercial to Medicaid is associated with an estimated 0.5%-1.0% decline in net patient service revenue and approximately 50-150 basis points in operating margin compression, before consideration of offsetting cost actions or Medicaid supplemental payments,” the report says.

9. The hospitals with large emergency medicine operations will likely experience more negative impacts from uncompensated care.

10. For-profit hospital operators could see reduced EBITDA due to the ACA’s enhanced premium tax credit expiration. Moody’s estimated for-profit operators could see up to 6.4% reduction in EBITDA year over year, with larger companies most able to make adjustments that would dampen impact.

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Revenue cycle leaders are facing a national coder shortage, intensifying payer complexity and tighter margins. In this environment, AI has become an operational necessity, not a strategic option. But the differentiator isn’t tool selection; it’s whether leaders have reframed workforce and governance for a technology that now arrives continuously, not in discrete projects.

During an April 14 featured session hosted by Soventum at Becker’s Hospital Review 16th Annual Meeting, three leaders working across academic medical centers, health systems and vendor partnerships discussed how they are pairing AI with upskilling and governance to protect both ROI and teams. The panelists were:

• Michelle McCormack, director of clinical documentation integrity at a large health system in California
• Tami McMasters Gomez, executive director of revenue cycle at UC Davis Health in Sacramento, Calif.
• Thea Campbell, business director of revenue cycle at Solventum and acting president of the American Health Information Management Association

Below are three takeaways from their conversation.

Note: Quotes have been edited for length and clarity.

1. The business case is coder shortage meets payer complexity

Ms. McMasters Gomez traced AI’s shift from innovation to necessity in mid-rev cycle to a national coder shortage producing backlogs in charge lag, AR days and related KPIs — especially at growing systems.

Ms. Campbell said payer complexity is the equal partner: realizing revenue has grown too fragmented and payer-specific for a single standardized workflow, and with organizations fighting for every dollar they collect, AI has become the tool finally equipped to address that complexity at scale.

2. Upskilling, not replacement, is the workforce play

At UC Davis Health, Ms. McMasters Gomez said the team is moving coders from repetitive areas like radiology, where AI is mature, onto more complex work such as dermatology procedure coding — while standing up a formal policy for auditing AI output and routing coders into different roles.

“There’s got to be a human in the loop,” she said.

Ms. McCormack said CDI teams will need a different talent mix once simple audits are automated: strategic thinkers, project managers and staff who can read tool performance and feed learnings back to vendors.

“These tools are only as good as the documentation it sits on,” she said.

Ms. Campbell framed the cultural shift plainly: “AI is not going to take your job. AI is going to change your job.”

3. Governance and pace separate winners from losers

Ms. McMasters Gomez described UC Davis’s IT AI governance and IT security structures, which vet every vendor through what she called a deliberately agonizing process before sign-off.

Ms. Campbell said IT partners at large systems are sometimes managing 150-plus products, meaning revenue cycle has to negotiate for a handful of priority projects rather than assume capacity. 

Both Ms. McCormack and Ms. Campbell said AI can no longer be treated as a discrete project — new capabilities arrive continuously, and leaders who chase every vendor will face significant rework as regulation catches up.

Beyond the project mindset

The panel’s common thread: pace, governance and workforce strategy matter more than tool selection. Ms. McCormack urged caution and stacked deployments around a small set of trusted vendors, with clinical, IT and revenue cycle leaders in the room together before adding more. For executives whose AI programs are still being managed pilot by pilot, the implication is a structural rethink of how AI capabilities are absorbed into daily operations.

The post Why AI in revenue cycle has become a necessity — 3 takeaways appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Maine is the best state for nurses to practice in 2026, according to WalletHub’s annual ranking, which evaluates opportunity, competition and working conditions. 

To determine the best and worst states for nurses, the personal finance company evaluated all 50 states across two two dimensions: opportunity and competition, and work environment. Those dimensions were evaluated using 20 metrics, ranging from monthly average starting salary for nurses to average commute time.

Analysts graded each metric on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the most favorable conditions for nurses.

Each state’s weighted average across all metrics was used to calculate its overall score and rank the sample. More information about the methodology is available here.

Here are the 10 best and worst states for nurses in 2026, per the ranking: 

Best 

1. Maine

2. New Hampshire

3. Washington

4. Oregon

5. Arizona

6. West Virginia

7. Minnesota

8. Montana

9. Connecticut

10. Florida

Worst

50. Oklahoma

49. North Dakota

48. Alabama

47. Mississippi

46. South Dakota

45. Louisiana

44. Tennessee

43. Arkansas

42. Hawaii

41. Virginia

Three notes: 

• Though ranked No. 1 overall, Maine placed 10th for the opportunity and competition rank, and third for work environment.

• New Hampshire (ranked second overall), earned the top spot for the work environment rank and placed 12th for opportunity and competition.

• Arizona (ranked fifth overall) was ranked No. 1 for opportunity and competition, and 25th for work environment. 

The post 10 best, worst states for nurses in 2026 appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

WalletHub released its 2026 ranking of the best and worst entry-level jobs April 27, and certified nursing assistants in nursing homes claimed the No. 3 spot — driven by a 2.9% unemployment rate, high job availability, and one of the lowest chances of being replaced by automation.  

To identify the best and worst first-timer jobs, the personal finance company compared 108 entry-level occupations across three dimensions: immediate opportunity, growth potential and job hazards.

Analysts evaluated the dimensions using 12 metrics ranging from average starting salary to typicality of working more than 40 hours per week. 

Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with 100 representing the most favorable conditions for entry-level workers. WalletHub used each entry-level position’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall score. More information about the methodology is available here.

The best and worst entry-level jobs, alongside their scores, according to the analysis: 

Best

1. Hardware engineer I

2. Engineer I

3. Certified nursing assistant – nursing home

4. Software engineer I

5. Safety representative I

6. Safety technician I

7. Electrical engineer I

8. Operations research analyst I

9. Environmental, health and safety engineer I

10. Electronics engineer I

Worst

108. Welder I

107. Emergency dispatcher

106. Automotive mechanic I

105. Boilermaker I

104. Computer numeric control machine programmer I

103. Mechanical drafter I

102. Telecommunications technician I

101. Benefits administrator I

100. Tool and die maker I

99. Architectural drafter I

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Florida has the highest number of “best” senior living communities, while three states — Alaska, Montana and North Dakota — have no top-ranked communities, according to an April 14 U.S News & World Report ranking. 

In its 5th annual Best Senior Living ratings, U.S. News honored a total of 1,614 communities for providing the best care.

The report analyzed 3,098 senior living communities in independent living, assisted living and/or memory care. The company also took into account community life aspects, such as dining and activities, management and staff responsiveness, overall value and social engagement, and safety and caregiving. Participant communities had to be part of the consumer-satisfaction survey in 2025 and meet other eligibility criteria. Read more about the methodology here.

Here is the total number of top-ranked senior living communities in each state and the District of Columbia.

Alabama: 8

Alaska: 0

Arizona: 32

Arkansas: 6

California: 117

Colorado: 34

Connecticut: 23

Delaware: 2

Florida: 137

Georgia: 35

Hawaii: 1

Idaho: 5

Illinois: 98

Indiana: 37

Iowa: 17

Kansas: 34

Kentucky: 10

Louisiana: 12

Maine: 2

Maryland: 51

Massachusetts: 68

Michigan: 46

Minnesota: 37

Mississippi: 8

Missouri: 73

Montana: 0

Nebraska: 19

Nevada: 7

New Hampshire: 8

New Jersey: 51

New Mexico: 2

New York: 56

North Carolina: 67

North Dakota: 0

Ohio: 47

Oklahoma: 20

Oregon: 14

Pennsylvania: 74

Rhode Island: 11

South Carolina: 24

South Dakota: 1

Tennessee: 58

Texas: 139

Utah: 8

Vermont: 3

Virginia: 60

Washington: 36

Washington, D.C.: 1

West Virginia: 5

Wisconsin: 9

Wyoming: 1

The post The best states for senior living: US News appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

In 2024, the uninsured rate grew for the first time since 2019, according to an April 9 KFF issue brief.

KFF reviewed data on uninsured trends and demographics in recent years, focusing on individuals under 65 years old. Following a pandemic-era rollback of redeterminations, people eventually began facing eligibility checks after Medicaid’s continuous enrollment provision ended in 2023. The following year, many states finished this unwinding, resulting in coverage losses. Medicaid and ACA changes, along with enhanced subsidy expiration, could keep up this trend in future years.

Here are 11 notes about the uninsured in 2024:

1. The number of people lacking health insurance and the uninsured rate increased in 2024 for the first time since 2019, reaching 26.7 million people and a rate of 9.8%.

2. The Congressional Budget Office estimates over 14 million more people will be uninsured by 2034.

3. In terms of the uninsured’s economic status, 85.1% reside with working families, 73.8% have at least one full-time worker in their household and 80.1% are low income.

4. The uninsured disproportionately live in the 10 non-expansion states. Forty-two percent of uninsured individuals live in these states, resulting in an uninsured rate of 14.5% in non-expansion states versus 8% in expansion states.

5. The majority (63.7%) of uninsured individuals are people of color, and 41.9% of the uninsured population is Hispanic.

6. Texas had the highest uninsured rate at 19.2%, and Massachusetts had the lowest at 3.3%.

7. One in 4 uninsured people were not U.S. citizens. 

8. Over 40% of uninsured adults did not have a consistent venue to seek medical advice or receive care while sick.

9. Nearly 60% of the uninsured said either they or someone they live with struggled to pay for healthcare.

10. Over half of those who are uninsured could be eligible for Medicaid or subsidized marketplace coverage but did not have it.

11. Nearly 40% of adults without health insurance in the three years leading up to 2024 said it was due to a job loss or new employer. About one-quarter said they were no longer able to access Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program or another form of public coverage. Cost increases, missed deadlines and age were other explanations.

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With the United States facing an estimated deficit of more than 250,000 registered nurses by 2028, the nursing shortage is seemingly hard to escape right now: It is dominating headlines, part of policy debates and seen in the lived experiences of anyone who has waited for hours in an understaffed emergency room. But for all the attention this crisis receives, we’re not talking enough about what’s driving it. Beyond the bedside nursing shortage, there is a growing deficit of advanced practice providers, clinical educators, and nurse leaders who oversee care delivery and manage healthcare teams. These are the professionals who train the next generation of nurses — and without them, we risk slowing down the talent pipeline significantly.

The numbers are stark. According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, more than 65,000 qualified applicants were turned away from nursing programs in the most recent academic year, largely because schools lack the faculty to teach them. The national nursing faculty vacancy rate currently hovers near 7%, with nearly 1,700 positions unfilled. More than a third of current nursing faculty are over age 60, and a wave of retirements is accelerating the shortage. Meanwhile, faculty salaries trail clinical roles by 20% to 30%, making it difficult to attract doctoral-prepared nurses to academia when they can earn significantly more in practice.

This creates a vicious cycle: Too few educators mean too few seats in nursing programs, which result in too few graduates entering the workforce. At this rate, the bedside shortage will only keep growing. Breaking that cycle requires making graduate nursing education more accessible — not only for the students who need advanced degrees, but also for the faculty we need to keep teaching. Online graduate programs offer one of the most effective paths to doing both.

Yet these programs can face resistance. Critics question whether virtual formats can adequately prepare clinicians for the realities of patient care. Too often, online programs are treated as a pandemic-era stopgap, rather than a legitimate long-term model. That skepticism comes at a real cost. For licensed nurses looking to advance their careers — by pursuing a Master’s, a Doctor of Nursing Practice, or a specialized certification — traditional in-person graduate programs remain a significant barrier. Many are working full time, raising families, or living in rural areas far from academic medical centers. The same constraints also apply to many faculty members. By reducing the burden of regular travel and rigid scheduling, we can attract and retain experienced educators and make the profession more attractive and accessible to the next generation.

Online graduate programs remove those barriers without compromising rigor. The most impactful models do so not by abandoning hands-on learning, but rather by incorporating it strategically. A hybrid approach is most effective because it combines high-quality online coursework with intentional on-campus immersion experiences, like direct faculty mentorship and simulation training. This allows students to gain the flexibility they need without sacrificing the experiential learning required to be prepared for a clinical environment.

Like many areas of higher education, online nursing instruction became more prevalent in reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic. But for some institutions, virtual education is far from new. At The University of Texas Medical Branch, our School of Nursing has spent more than a decade developing and refining virtual instruction for graduate nursing students. Over a decade ago, we implemented a quality improvement program using videoconferencing via FaceTime to conduct virtual clinical site visits.

Across 492 visits over three semesters, faculty, students and preceptors all found the virtual format to be an effective way to evaluate student progress, with more than 85% of stakeholders reporting satisfaction and an estimated savings of nearly $142,000 (compared to in-person clinical site visits). We also consistently see high certification exam pass rates. The approach has worked so well that additional graduate tracks adopted it independently. When the pandemic hit and institutions scrambled to move online, UTMB had years of established protocols to draw from — and as a result, other programs in Texas, as well as nationally and internationally, even reached out to us for guidance.

Online graduate nursing programs are not a workaround. They are a proven workforce development engine — one that expands access for students, eases the burden on faculty and introduces future practitioners to telehealth workflows before they ever enter practice. Solving the nursing crisis requires more than recruiting new graduates; it requires investing in the nurses we already have and giving them accessible paths to advanced degrees, leadership roles and teaching careers. Institutions need to commit to building and funding online graduate programs, and accrediting bodies need to evaluate them on outcomes rather than format. Online graduate programs have been building toward this moment for years. Now it’s time to fund them, scale them and treat them as what they are: one of the most effective tools we have to solve the nursing crisis.

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Health systems and specialty practices are under increasing pressure to accelerate patient access to therapies. Fragmented workflows, disconnected systems and administrative work continue to slow that process.

During a recent webinar hosted by Becker’s Healthcare and CoverMyMeds, leaders from CoverMyMeds and Ontada explored how integrated technology and AI-powered automation can streamline specialty medication access and improve outcomes for both patients and care teams.

Here are four key takeaways from the conversation.

1. Fragmentation is the core barrier

Both Miranda Delatore DNP, RN, NEA-BC, vice president of product at CoverMyMeds, and Molly Brady, RN, BSN, director of customer success at Ontada, identified fragmentation as the root cause of delays in specialty therapy starts. Care teams are navigating a patchwork of EHRs, payer portals, faxes, emails and spreadsheets to complete a single medication access workflow.

“None of these tools were really designed to work together,” Miranda said. “By default, clinicians have ended up acting as this integration layer and we all know that’s definitely not why they went to school.”

She noted that roughly 60% of clinicians still cite phone calls, emails and manual EHR data entry as among their most time-consuming daily tasks. These administrative delays often translate directly into clinical delays.

Molly echoed this from the oncology practice level, describing a recent clinic visit. “The care team was literally going to the order in the EHR, looking at the practice management system, into the payer portal just to complete the approval step tied to a single treatment plan.”

In oncology, where timing directly affects outcomes, those gaps have real consequences. “Delays in treatment create more stress for those patients, and they force clinics to adjust infusion schedules, chair time and staffing,” Molly said. “When those workflows aren’t connected, those delays are absolutely unavoidable.”

2. The cost of administrative work

The complexity behind a single therapy start spans benefits investigation, prior authorization and patient support enrollment. Each step often requires accessing multiple disconnected systems.

Inconsistent data formats, repeated information requests and manual re-entry create inefficiencies and increase the risk of error.

“Everyone is dependent on having the full story around the patient, and we’ve not enabled them in a way to have access to that consistently,” Miranda said.

The responsibility falls heavily on care teams working directly with patients facing serious diagnoses. “These are the people that are often face-to-face with a patient who’s carrying the weight of a really heavy diagnosis,” she said. “I believe that’s where health systems are really feeling this friction.”

Beyond the human impact, the inefficiency is costly. Health systems are allocating staff time to administrative tasks that pull them away from direct patient care, a dynamic many organizations are working to reverse.

3. Integration enables scalable improvement

CoverMyMeds is addressing fragmentation by bringing benefits investigation, prior authorization and patient support enrollment into a single connected experience embedded within the EHR.

“When an EHR can automatically surface the right information and pre-populate what’s needed, it dramatically reduces the amount of manual input that’s required,” Miranda said. “That alignment reduces the delays caused by missing or mismatched fields and leads to more complete submissions on the first try.”

She emphasized that the goal is to support existing clinical workflows rather than change them. By integrating tools directly into the EHR, care teams can stay focused on patients instead of navigating multiple systems.

4. AI and automation

Both speakers distinguished between automation and AI, noting that each plays a specific role in improving workflows. Automation addresses repetitive, structured tasks, while AI helps interpret unstructured clinical data and align it with payer requirements.

“Think about taking clinical notes or nuanced documentation and mapping that information to complex payer requirements,” Miranda said. “Those are areas where today clinicians spend a lot of time hunting and pecking in the chart.”

The platform’s design reflects a balance between efficiency and oversight: technology operates in the background while clinicians retain visibility and control over decisions.

For health system leaders, the starting point is clear. Organizations should assess current workflows, benchmark performance and identify gaps in interoperability across providers, pharmacies and payers.

“Understand the impact to patients first,” Mirand said. “Technology really connects and works in the background but ultimately the clinical teams always have the oversight to make the decision to move forward. The value is to reduce friction — but not to introduce uncertainty.”

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Per-person healthcare spending among people with employer-sponsored insurance averaged $6,711 nationally in 2022, though this figure varies significantly by geography, according to an April 9 report from the Health Care Cost Institute. 

To compile the report, the nonprofit research institute analyzed spending data across 269 individual metro areas in 45 states, examining the price, use and mix of services for people with employer-sponsored insurance.

Prices accounted for the most spending variation across markets, and high outpatient hospital spending was the strongest predictor of overall spending. Of the 269 markets included in the analysis, 88% had highly or very highly concentrated hospital markets, where less competition tends to drive prices higher, according to the report. Only 3% of markets were unconcentrated and all in major cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City.

All 10 of the highest-spending metro areas had prices above the national average. In addition, of the 102 metros with above-average overall spending, 93 also had above-average outpatient spending.

10 highest-spending metro areas:

1. Charleston, W.Va.
2. Anchorage, Alaska
3. Janesville, Wis.
4. New York City
5. Huntington, W.Va.
6. Springfield, Ill.
7. Racine, Wis.
8. Green Bay, Wis.
9. Champaign, Ill.
10. Gettysburg, Pa.

10 lowest-spending metro areas:

1. Bakersfield, Calif.
2. Tucson, Ariz.
3. Riverside, Calif.
4. Fayetteville, Ark.
5. Flagstaff, Ariz.
6. Morristown, Tenn.
7. Knoxville, Tenn.
8. San Luis Obispo, Calif.
9. Fort Smith, Ark.
10. Johnson City, Tenn.

View the full report here.

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More hospitals and health systems are leaning on discharge lounges to decongest EDs and improve patient experience, but there are no industrywide procedures for setting up a lounge.

The first lounges were piloted around 2020 and have gained popularity over the last few years. Palos Heights, Ill.-based Northwestern Medicine Palos Hospital opened its discharge lounge in December 2022. Within a year, the lounge cut average ED wait times down to one hour, cut the number of patients left without being seen by 49% and improved both inpatient and ED patient experience scores.

Becker’s spoke with Rebecca Baute, BSN, RN, chief nurse executive, and Brittany Barasa, DNP, RN, manager of patient care of nursing throughput and patient care tech float pool, in an upcoming Becker’s Healthcare “Clinical Leadership Podcast” to discuss the best practices for setting up a successful discharge lounge. 

Here are the six best practices they recommend:

1. Having the right staff run the lounge is critical, Ms. Baute said. Their lounge is run by a dedicated, tenured registered nurse who can work independently and has strong critical thinking skills, along with a patient care technician. These staff are prepared to recognize when a patient decompensates and needs to be readmitted, and can review charts, identify potential discharges proactively and understand where bottlenecks are likely to occur.

2. Setting clear expectations and having an in-depth orientation ensures the discharge staff can work independently from day 1. Discharge staff participate in the same annual skills days as the hospital’s med-surg and step-down nurses to ensure they have the same training and exposure to products and tools, Ms. Barasa said. Leaders also connected discharge staff with the physical therapy team to train them in body mechanics, so that staff could better help patients go from stretchers or wheelchairs into cars. This prevents injury for the discharge staff and provides a safer environment for patients. 

3. Discharge lounges should be close to an exit where ambulance partners and families can pull right up and have a direct path to patients. That ease of access makes a real difference, Ms. Baute said. At the same time, having proximity to clinical support means the discharge staff is surrounded by other nurses who can respond quickly if a patient’s condition worsens.

4. Patient comfort is also vital, since some patients spend hours in the lounge. The hospital provides quiet packs that include earplugs, eye masks, crossword puzzles and other items to keep patients comfortable and entertained. The lounge also has access to a restroom, and space for medical supplies and equipment.

5. The lounge is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. At the beginning of each day, the team reviews all patients with current discharge orders and uses a team chat that includes discharge lounge staff, charge nurses and relief charge nurses, to identify patients that are ready to be sent to the lounge. Patients are transferred to the lounge, where they then receive education, the after-visit summary, medication and are discharged. During slow periods, the lounge staff rounds on units proactively to assist with discharge and bringing patients to the lounge.

6. Communication across the organization is key. “Interdisciplinary teams need to understand the why behind the discharge lounge,” Ms. Baute said. “Much of the time, the purpose is to decompress the emergency department, and a surprising number of people across the organization don’t realize that we may have 40 patients holding in hallways. Without that shared understanding, teams won’t consistently use the lounge as the resource it’s meant to be.”

Communication also includes constantly reviewing and expanding the patient criteria over time to meet the current needs or the organization. 

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About one-third of Americans say they get health information from social media, while a smaller but growing share turn to artificial intelligence chatbots, according to an April 7 analysis from Pew Research Center.

The findings, based on a survey of 5,111 adults conducted in October 2025, highlight how digital platforms are reshaping where people seek health advice, even as concerns about accuracy persist.

Here are seven key findings from the analysis:

1. Roughly 36% of U.S. adults report using social media for health information at least sometimes, compared with 22% who say the same about AI chatbots. Both sources trail more traditional avenues such as healthcare providers (85%) and major health websites (60%).
2. Users of both social media and AI chatbots are more likely to describe these tools as convenient rather than reliable. For example, 40% of social media users say health information on those platforms is highly convenient, but only 7% consider it highly accurate.
3. Similarly, about half of chatbot users say the information is convenient, and 41% say it is easy to understand. However, opinions on accuracy are mixed, with slightly more users saying chatbot information is not accurate than those who say it is.
4. Younger adults are more likely than older Americans to use both sources. About 52% of adults under 30 say they get health information from social media at least sometimes, compared with 21% of those 65 and older. For AI chatbots, about 32% of adults ages 18 to 29 report using them for health information, versus 10% of those 65 and older.
5. The report also found disparities tied to income and insurance status. Americans without health insurance are somewhat more likely to rely on social media and chatbots for health information than those with coverage.
6. Despite their accessibility, both platforms fall short on personalization. A majority of social media users — 59% — say the health information they encounter is not personalized, while 47% of chatbot users say the same.
7. There is also significant overlap between the two groups: 61% of people who use AI chatbots for health information also report using social media for the same purpose.

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In a reversal of a three-year trend, job satisfaction among nurses is declining and more are considering leaving the profession, according to a recent survey of 2,090 nurses. 

Nurse.org, a news and educational website focused on the nursing profession, surveyed its audience of active nurses and nursing students in February and March. Because the respondents are Nurse.org’s audience, the organization said April 6 the survey results are not a nationally representative sample.

Nurse.org has conducted this survey annually since 2022 to track national trends in job satisfaction, burnout and other workforce trends. Here are five key findings from this year’s survey: 

1. Plans to leave: Twenty-three percent of nurses said they are at least somewhat likely to leave the profession within the next year. 

2. Job satisfaction: In the 2026 survey, 47% of nurses said they were satisfied with work, representing a decrease from the 55% who said the same in 2025. 

While the percentage is an improvement from the 2022 survey — when 28% expressed satisfaction — the 2026 results show a stress signal for the future nursing workforce. The least satisfied group was nursing students currently in the workforce, as 18% rated their job a 4 or 5 out of 5. 

3. What’s retaining bedside nurses: Approximately 2 in 5 respondents selected financial necessity as a reason they are staying at the bedside despite wanting to leave. Other common reasons include schedule convenience (32%), commitment to patient care (28%) and workplace relationships (24%). Nurses could select up to three choices. 

Eight percent cited good management or leadership support as a reason to stay on the job, the survey found. 

“Nearly a quarter of nurses staying at the bedside say they’re waiting for a planned career transition or retirement (23%),” Nurse.org said. “The picture this creates is of a workforce that, for many, is staying not because they want to but because they have to. That’s a fragile foundation for retention.”

4. Financial stability: Although 55% of respondents said their compensation increased between 2025 and 2026, 37% said they would go into debt if an unexpected $1,000 expense appeared. 

More than one-third (37%) said financial strain has prompted them to work extra shifts or overtime, 15% said they have taken a second job and 8% said financial stress has prompted considerations to leave bedside nursing. 

5. Workplace violence: Since the organization’s 2022 survey, reported rates of workplace violence have not improved. 

In this year’s survey, 52% of nurses said they have experienced verbal threats or aggressive language in the past year, 27% reported physical assault and 10% reported sexual harassment. 

Overall, Nurse.org said nurses remain passionate about their profession but poor workplace conditions “are pushing the needle in the wrong direction again.”

“None of these shifts is catastrophic on its own. But taken together, they suggest that the structural problems facing nursing were not resolved by the brief period of recovery that followed the pandemic. They were, at best, partially and temporarily eased,” the organization said.

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So far in 2026, The Joint Commission — the oldest and world’s largest standard-setting and accrediting body in healthcare — has launched two outcomes-driven certifications and condensed serious safety event lists. 

Here are four updates the accrediting body has announced since January, starting with the most recent:

1. The organization launched its first outcomes-driven certifications March 30: one for perinatal care and the other for cardiac procedures. The perinatal care certification will evaluate hospitals’ maternal and newborn outcomes and patient care experiences, and the cardiac certification will assess operation-specific outcome measures, readmissions and patient experience data. 

2. Two of The Joint Commission’s affiliate organizations named new board members March 9. Adolfo Llinás, MD, chief medical officer of Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá in Bogotá, Colombia, joined the Board of Joint Commission Resources. Sarita Mohanty, MD, president and CEO of the SCAN Foundation in Long Beach, Calif., joined the National Quality Forum Board.

3. The Joint Commission and the National Quality Forum plan to align their serious safety reporting frameworks. The accrediting body will adopt the NQF’s Serious Reportable Events List across all accredited domestic and international organizations, effective Jan. 1.

4. The National Association for Healthcare Quality and The Joint Commission rolled out a new regulatory and accreditation micro-credential for practical survey readiness. The self-paced program trains healthcare professionals to interpret standards, manage surveys and sustain corrective actions. 

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Massachusetts is the best state for children’s healthcare, WalletHub found.

The personal finance website compared the 50 states and District of Columbia across three dimensions: kids’ health and access to healthcare; kids’ nutrition, physical activity and obesity; and kids’ oral health. Each state was evaluated using 33 metrics, which was graded on a 100-point scale, with 100 representing the best care. The data included measures for children and younger.

Here are the best and worst states for children’s healthcare, along with their total score:

Best states

1. Massachusetts: 67.34
2. Rhode Island: 61.77
3. Connecticut: 60.91
4. Vermont: 60.90
5. Hawaii: 60.74
6. New Jersey: 60.32
7. Pennsylvania: 58.17
8. New York: 57.41
9. Iowa: 57.01
10. California: 56.25

Worst states

1. Mississippi: 37.69
2. Arizona: 41.36
3. Alaska: 42.20
4. Montana: 42.91
5. Kentucky: 43.98
6. Wyoming: 44.09
7. Georgia: 44.59
8. Texas: 44.63
9. Oklahoma: 44.72
10. Arkansas: 45.02

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U.S. News & World Report published its 2026 best medical schools list April 7 as part of its Best Graduate Schools rankings.

Medical schools were ranked on a four-tier system, with overall scores calculated based on percentile performance compared to all rated schools. U.S. News created two separate lists — best medical schools for research and best medical schools for primary care — both of which evaluate schools on faculty resources and entering students’ academic credentials. 

Tier 1 schools have the highest rankings, falling in the 85th to 99th percentile. U.S. News surveyed 203 medical schools, including 102 that qualified for research rankings and 99 for primary care. 

The research list included metrics such as research activity and total NIH research grants, while the primary care list included metrics such as medical school graduates practicing in primary care specialties.

Schools that declined to participate or lack sufficient data were labeled unranked. Peer and residency assessment surveys were not used in the medical school rankings. Learn more about the methodology here.

Here are the highest-performing medical schools for 2026, in alphabetical order, per U.S. News:

Tier 1 medical schools for research

• Baylor College of Medicine (Houston)
• Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland)
• Emory University (Atlanta)
• Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine (Rochester, Minn.)
• Ohio State University (Columbus)
• University of California Los Angeles David Geffen School of Medicine
• University of California San Diego
• University of California San Francisco 
• University of Colorado School of Medicine (Aurora)
• University of Florida (Gainesville)
• University of Pittsburgh
• University of Rochester (N.Y.)
• University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine (Tampa)
• University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (Dallas)
• Vanderbilt University (Nashville, Tenn.)
• Yale University (New Haven, Conn.)

Tier 1 medical schools for primary care

• East Carolina University Brody School of Medicine (Greenville, N.C.)
• Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth (Hanover, N.H.)
• Saint Louis University 
• University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (Little Rock)
• University of California Davis
• University of California San Diego
• University of California San Francisco
• University of Hawaii-Manoa John A. Burns School of Medicine (Honolulu)
• University of Kansas Medical Center (Kansas City)
• University of Minnesota (Minneapolis)
• University of Nebraska Medical Center (Omaha)
• University of New Mexico (Albuquerque)
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Western University of Health Sciences (Pomona, Calif.)
• William Carey University College of Osteopathic Medicine (Hattiesburg, Miss.)

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U.S. News & World Report released its 2026 rankings of the nation’s best graduate nursing programs April 7, with Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Emory University in Atlanta topping the lists for Master of Science in Nursing and Doctor of Nursing Practice programs, respectively.

The rankings are part of U.S. News‘ broader Best Graduate Schools rankings, which evaluate programs across disciplines including business, education, law, engineering, medicine and nursing using a combination of statistical indicators and peer assessments.

For nursing, the rankings evaluated in-person, hybrid and flexible MSN and DNP programs using data submitted in late 2025 and early 2026 from 682 accredited institutions. Of those, 147 MSN and 154 DNP programs met eligibility criteria, including accreditation and minimum enrollment thresholds.

The methodology incorporates 15 indicators across areas such as faculty resources, research activity, program size, student selectivity and peer and professional assessments. Weighting for these indicators remains unchanged from recent editions.

Across all graduate disciplines, U.S. News bases rankings on a mix of expert opinion and quantitative measures of academic quality and outcomes, including inputs such as student qualifications and outputs such as graduate success.

The full methodology can be found here.

Note: The lists include ties.

The 10 top nursing schools for master’s degrees: 

1. Emory University Woodruff (Atlanta)
2. Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore)
3. Duke University (Durham, N.C.)
3. Ohio State University (Columbus)
5. Vanderbilt University (Nashville, Tenn.)
6. University of Michigan (Ann Arbor)
7. New York University—Meyers (New York City)
8. University of Alabama at Birmingham
8. University of California, Los Angeles
8. University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia)

The 10 best nursing schools for DNPs:

1. Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore)
2. Emory University Woodruff (Atlanta)
3. Rush University (Chicago)
4. Duke University (Durham, N.C.)
4. University of California, San Francisco
4. University of Michigan (Ann Arbor)
4. University of Washington (Seattle)
8. University of Minnesota Twin Cities (Minneapolis)
9. University of Alabama at Birmingham
9. University of Pittsburgh 

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Madison, Ga.-based Morgan Medical Center has kicked off a $2 million capital campaign after it received a $1 million matching challenge grant from an anonymous donor.

The “Growing for You” campaign will fund expansions and upgrades at the 25-bed critical access facility to keep residents from having to travel outside the county for specialized care, according to an April 6 news release shared with Becker’s. 

Campaign improvements include a third operating room suite, expanded emergency department treatment rooms, a new laboratory area, a new pharmacy and cardiopulmonary areas and diagnostic imaging enhancements. 

“Charitable gifts, including new gifts received through Georgia’s popular rural hospital tax credit program, Georgia Heart, will be matched dollar for dollar up to a total match of $1 million,” the release said. 

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Plentiful job openings and potential six-figure incomes are drawing young Americans to nursing, while prospects in other fields are declining, The Wall Street Journal reported April 1.

While factory work and office jobs were once the most reliable path to the middle class in the U.S., automation, globalized manufacturing and, most recently, artificial intelligence have threatened some of these pathways. Amid this, healthcare has remained largely insulated from the effects of AI on job prospects.

Throughout an uncertain U.S. labor market, nursing offers stability and, for some, prosperity, the Journal reported.

The median annual income for registered nurses is nearly double that of all occupations, at $93,600 compared to $49,500, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It rises to $132,050 for nurse practitioners, nurse midwives and nurse anesthetists. 

Healthcare was the largest driver of job growth in the U.S. in 2025, while many other industries cut jobs. The trend does not seem likely to change anytime soon: Healthcare could become the largest private-sector employment category within the next decade, according to a March report. Employment of advanced-degree nurses and registered nurses is projected to increase by 35% and 5%, respectively, from 2024 to 2034, according to the Labor Department.

Further, healthcare workers’ earnings have increased nearly twice as fast as non-healthcare workers between 1980 and 2022, especially for nurses, according to an October 2025 research paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Healthcare employee earnings increased 60.1% between 1980 and 2022, compared to 34.1% for non-healthcare workers. For nurses, earnings rose 81.7%.

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The return on investment conversation for health technology and AI-powered applications has evolved over the years. Initially a sticky subject without a true answer, IT leaders in many organizations have been able to prove the value of soft ROI and lean into the discomfort of making big investments that indirectly influence the bottom line.

Becker’s Healthcare asked 60+ healthcare technology, financial, clinical and operational leaders about how their organizations measure and track technology ROI and 10 themes emerged, setting the tone for how they’ll evaluate future investments.

The leaders surveyed are speakers at the Becker’s 11th Annual Health IT + Digital Health + Revenue Cycle Conference, Sept. 14-17, 2026 in Chicago. Click here to learn more and register or sponsor.

1. ROI is multidimensional. Financial return is necessary, but not sufficient. The near-universal consensus among IT leaders was that healthcare technology ROI cannot be reduced to a payback period or an internal rate of return calculation. Leaders across the field structure their thinking across clinical, operational, financial, and experiential dimensions simultaneously. The organizations that have advanced furthest have built formal frameworks — scorecards, tiered value models, balanced metric sets — to make this multidimensionality legible to finance committees rather than leaving it as a philosophical disclaimer.

2. Reducing clinician burnout and administrative burden is a primary return. The reclamation of clinician time — from documentation, administrative tasks and the cognitive overhead of poorly designed workflows — is both a moral and financial imperative. Leaders said any technology that adds net burden to providers is not an innovation but technical debt, and the long-term cost of that debt — in turnover, in errors, in disengagement — routinely exceeds the paper savings that justified the investment. If physicians and nurses don’t get meaningful time back, the financial ROI tends to disappoint.

3. Adoption is the gating factor and deployment is not the same as value. A technology deployed but not used delivers a return of precisely zero. The most rigorous frameworks treat adoption and sustained workflow change as the true leading indicators that value will be realized, not go-live dates or license counts. Organizations that treat implementation as an afterthought will consistently underperform on their technology investments regardless of how sound the underlying solution is.

4. Define success criteria before you buy anything. The leaders most confident in their ROI frameworks share a common practice: they establish the business case, KPIs, and definition of success before procurement, not after. Technology investments fail most predictably when the problem being solved is unclear at the outset, leaving organizations automating broken processes rather than fixing them. The discipline of writing the business case with explicit objectives, scope, and measurable outcomes is the prerequisite for any honest ROI conversation.

5. AI requires a portfolio approach to tracking and measurement. Different categories of AI investment require fundamentally different ROI metrics. Table-stakes AI might be measured by staff satisfaction and retention, AI-enhanced workflows by efficiency and quality improvements, AI-imagined new care models by clinical outcomes like mortality and length of stay, and exploratory AI by its contribution to the innovation pipeline. Applying a single financial threshold across all AI investments will cause organizations to kill the most transformative bets while over-investing in incremental ones.

6. Risk reduction and cost avoidance must be quantified. Cybersecurity investments, patient safety tools, and regulatory compliance technology generate returns through costs and harms avoided rather than revenue generated, and these returns are chronically undervalued in ROI conversations. Preventing a serious adverse event, a ransomware disruption, or a regulatory penalty can dwarf the savings from efficiency-focused technology. The challenge is not recognizing this intellectually but building the analytical discipline to put numbers on avoided outcomes before the board, not after the incident.

7. The best technology disappears into the workflow. Truly valuable technology becomes invisible; it quietly removes friction rather than adding a new interface layer that clinicians must navigate around. If a solution is generating frequent complaints in the months after go-live, the end users are feeling frustrated by it instead of relieved. Organizations that consistently realize technology ROI treat workflow integration as a primary design constraint with the potential to unlock real value over time.

8. Trusted data and real-time analytics are the connective tissue. A consistent view is that technology without trusted data creates no value regardless of how capable the underlying tool is. The system-level return from technology accrues when clinical, operational, and financial leaders can act on high-quality, timely information, shifting institutions from reactive to proactive postures. Building that data foundation is often less visible than deploying a new application, but it is what determines whether the application’s ROI is theoretical or real.

9. Patient outcomes and access are the ultimate standard. Across clinical leaders in particular, there is a consistent anchoring of ROI definitions to measurable improvements in outcomes, access, and quality of life for patients with financial returns treated as instrumental, a means of sustaining the mission rather than the mission itself. Technologies that cannot demonstrate impact on those dimensions will eventually struggle to justify themselves regardless of their operational efficiencies. The ultimate measure of healthcare technology ROI is lives improved or saved.

10. Speed to value and total lifecycle cost both matter. The speed of value delivery is a component of ROI. An investment that doesn’t yield returns for two years costs the organization real capital in the intervening period and weakens the case for the next transformation initiative. IT leaders are now advocating for full lifecycle cost analysis of new technology that accounts for implementation, training, ongoing support, and optimization. Organizations that consistently win on technology ROI model both dimensions and build the organizational change capacity to accelerate realization, not just the analytical capacity to measure it.

The post 10 trends in healthcare tech investments and ROI appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Seventeen healthcare organizations landed on Fortune’s 2026 list of the “100 Best Companies to Work For.”

Fortune partnered with Great Place to Work, a people analytics firm, to create the list. The firm surveyed employees at various organizations, gathering qualitative and quantitative feedback about workplace culture by asking them to rate 60 statements on a five-point scale and answer two open-ended questions. The list is based on employee feedback, and companies with the broadest sets of employees reporting positive experiences earn the highest rankings.

Employers must have 1,000 or more U.S. employees and be nongovernment organizations to be considered. Great Place to Work received more than 1.3 million survey responses in the last year, including more than 640,000 from employees at eligible companies.

The healthcare organizations featured include health systems, pharmaceutical companies and healthcare services companies.

Here are the 17 healthcare organizations that made Fortune’s list, along with their rank out of 100 and headquarters city:

22. Brightview Senior Living (Baltimore)

26. Scripps Health (San Diego)

27. AbbVie (North Chicago, Ill.)

34. Texas Health Resources (Arlington)

39. Hackensack Meridian Health (Edison, N.J.)

40. CHG Healthcare Services (Midvale, Utah)

45. Baptist Health South Florida (Coral Gables)

55. Stryker (Portage, Mich.)

58. Merck (Rahway, N.J.)

61. Elevance Health (Indianapolis)

65. Vertex Pharmaceuticals (Boston)

68. United Therapeutics (Silver Spring, Md.)

70. SCAN Health Plan (Long Beach, Calif.)

75. Atlantic Health System (Morristown, N.J.)

77. Shields Health Solutions (Stoughton, Mass.)

97. Jackson Healthcare (Alpharetta, Ga.)

98. Wellstar Health System (Marietta, Ga.)

The post Fortune’s 17 best healthcare companies to work for appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Nearly 1 in 5 people who turn to Microsoft Copilot for health information discuss personal symptoms or conditions, the tech giant found.

Microsoft analyzed more than 500,000 deidentified health-related conversations to reveal what people are aiming to find out.

Nationwide, consumers are increasingly seeking medical advice from AI chatbots, while some researchers are calling for a “humble” AI framework that isn’t so authoritative (the technology still often gets things wrong):

Here are seven key findings from the March 10 Microsoft Copilot report:

1. Nearly 20% of conversations involve personal symptom or condition discussions, indicating strong demand for individualized health guidance

2. The largest category — general health information (40%) — is heavily focused on specific treatments and conditions, suggesting true personal health intent may be higher.

3. About 1 in 7 personal health queries are about someone else (e.g., child, parent, partner), highlighting AI’s emerging role as a caregiving support tool.

4. Personal symptom and emotional health queries spike during evening and nighttime hours, when access to traditional care is limited.

5. Device usage differs significantly: Mobile is dominated by personal health concerns, while desktop skews toward professional and academic use.

6. A notable share of queries centers on healthcare navigation, including finding providers and understanding insurance, underscoring persistent system friction.

7. The findings point to implications for platform design, safety and responsible development of health AI tools.

The post What health questions are people asking Microsoft Copilot? appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Generation Z nurses require more frequent one-on-one interaction with managers and leaders than prior generations to maintain similar levels of engagement and retention, according to a March 25 report from Laudio and the American Organization for Nursing Leadership. 

“Engaging and Retaining Gen Z Nurses: Trends and Strategies” draws on data from Laudio’s workforce analytics platform, spanning nearly 100,000 registered nurses and their managers across more than 150 hospitals and health systems, along with interviews with nurse leaders. It examines how the fastest-growing segment of the nursing workforce is reshaping expectations around leadership, scheduling and career development.

Six key findings:

1. Gen Z now represents the second-largest cohort of nurses in health systems and is the only generation increasing its share, signaling a continued shift in workforce dynamics as older cohorts retire or exit.

2. Compared with other generations, Gen Z nurses require about 2.5 times more meaningful interactions with frontline leaders each month to achieve similar engagement and retention outcomes. These interactions typically included one-on-one check-ins, recognition and feedback. 

3. Retention is strongest in the first two years of employment, a period typically supported by residency programs and structured onboarding. After roughly 30 months, turnover among Gen Z nurses rises above that of other generations, suggesting the necessity of reinforced engagement once formal support programs taper off.

4. Gen Z nurses are more likely to cluster shifts to create longer stretches of time off and are more consistent about taking meal breaks. While these patterns may support work-life balance, the report also notes they could contribute to fatigue and burnout over time.

5. Early-career movement into certain specialties, such as critical care, is occurring alongside slower entry into others, including rehab and therapy roles. At the same time, Gen Z nurses are stepping into charge nurse and assistant manager roles at rates comparable to prior generations, indicating a stable early leadership pipeline.

6. Interviews with nurse leaders at high-performing organizations identified five priorities for engaging and retaining Gen Z nurses: personalizing professional development, reducing administrative friction, modernizing communication channels, offering greater scheduling flexibility and strengthening mental health support. Together, these efforts reflect a broader shift toward more individualized and continuous engagement strategies.

The post What it takes to sustain engagement among Gen Z nurses: 6 things to know  appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

In conversations with healthcare executives nationwide, I’m hearing a consistent theme: their organizations are investing heavily in AI to address capacity constraints and improve care quality, but getting clinical teams to use these tools effectively remains one of their biggest hurdles. Not the technology itself—the workforce’s readiness to leverage it.

We wanted to understand if this was systemic. So, we developed the Covista Care Capacity Monitor—a national study fielded by Gallup across all 50 states, surveying more than 1,300 clinicians and 160 healthcare executives.

What the Data Reveals

The adoption is real: 71% of healthcare organizations now use AI for clinical documentation, 54% for EHR interactions and 46% for diagnostics. Three-quarters of executives say AI has a positive impact on care quality. And 65% say AI can help address staffing shortages at least somewhat. The technology is working.

The hiring bar is shifting: 64% of healthcare executives say AI fluency now factors into recruiting decisions for physicians—57% for NPs and PAs, 49% for RNs. Nearly 60% also report that most of their existing clinical workforce needs upskilling or reskilling in these same technologies.

The priority gap tells its own story: 74% of clinicians say staffing is the problem, and only 34% prioritize technology improvements. Yet 63% say they want AI training. Those things aren’t in conflict—but right now, most clinicians aren’t seeing them as connected.

The Real Priority: Care Quality

When we asked healthcare executives about their top priorities for 2026, achieving adequate staffing ranked first, cited by 87% as a major priority.

The reason? Staffing shortages are negatively affecting care quality. 73% of healthcare executives and 76% of clinicians say staffing shortages negatively affect their ability to deliver high-quality care. Half of executives say shortages have reduced their capacity to serve patients.

From my vantage point preparing healthcare’s future workforce, these challenges are more connected than they may appear. Health systems have already made the AI investment—and are planning more. The workforce readiness investment is what unlocks it—getting that technology to do what it was built to do: relieve pressure on stretched teams and improve the quality of care they can deliver.

Most executives already sense this—the overwhelming majority see AI as part of the solution, increasing productivity and offloading the time-consuming administrative work that nurses, doctors and other clinicians deal with today. But the single biggest blocker right now is human capital: professionals who are fluent in these tools, can use them responsibly and help lead change within their health systems.

Our healthcare partners tell us that when clinicians are trained to use AI effectively, they can focus more attention on the aspects of care that require human judgment and connection. AI handles documentation, manages knowledge overload and surfaces what needs attention. Clinicians do what only clinicians can: exercise judgment, build trust and care for patients. The implementations that work are ones where staff understand what the technology is doing—and what it isn’t. Opacity breeds resistance. Transparency and training remove it.

Without readiness, the opposite happens. Experienced clinicians adopt new AI tools while managing full patient loads with minimal training time, creating stress and resistance. Newly hired staff need extensive AI onboarding, pulling experienced clinicians away from patient care.

The result? Underutilized technology. Frustrated staff. And care quality challenges remain unsolved.

What’s Actually Required

Getting there requires curriculum change that moves with urgency—for the next generation of healthcare professionals and the workforce already in place.

Our collaborations with Hippocratic AI, Google Cloud and Hello AI by GE Healthcare serve students pursuing healthcare careers and the health systems and healthcare providers whose staff need upskilling now. We’re developing AI credentials that run alongside traditional curriculum—building fundamental understanding of how AI works, when to trust it, when to question it and how to integrate it safely into clinical judgment.

The most effective approaches require sustained partnerships between healthcare and education providers. Health systems that clearly articulate what “AI workforce-ready” means for their environment give education institutions specific targets. Working together on competency development ensures graduates arrive with skills that match real-world workflows—and creates pathways for current staff to develop capabilities without leaving practice.

The Path Forward

Executives see AI’s value for care quality, but they’re underinvesting in workforce readiness. That gap explains why implementations stall.

The question isn’t whether to focus on staffing or AI adoption or care quality. It’s recognizing these are connected. You can’t hire fast enough to fill the gap. But you can prepare your current and future workforce to leverage AI in ways that help them deliver higher-quality care even while teams are stretched.

The organizations that realize the greatest returns on their AI investments will be the ones that build clinical trust in the technology in advance—through deliberate, sustained workforce preparation.

##

Michael Betz is Chief Digital Officer of Covista, America’s largest healthcare educator serving more than 97,000 students, and President of Walden University, one of Covista’s five institutions.

The Covista Care Capacity Monitor combines survey data from 1,347 clinicians and 167 healthcare executives with labor market analysis from U.S. Census, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Lightcast and IPEDS. Explore the platform at covista.com/research.

The post AI Won’t Improve Care Quality Until Your Workforce Is Ready appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Health IT leaders increasingly see vendor consolidation as central to achieving interoperability, but most organizations lack the tools to fully realize it, a March 24 survey from CliniComp found.

The findings are based on a survey of CIOs conducted by the CHIME Foundation and released by CliniComp. The survey examined how health system leaders view interoperability, including current capabilities, barriers to adoption and expected outcomes.

Here are five key findings from the survey:

1. Nearly 90% of respondents said vendor consolidation is critical to their interoperability strategy, while 16% reported their core electronic health record systems currently support vendor-agnostic interoperability.
2. Cost and vendor-related challenges emerged as the most significant barriers. About 47% of respondents cited the expense of initial and ongoing integration, while 42% pointed to vendor unwillingness and delays. Many organizations still rely on customized or add-on solutions to bridge integration gaps, the survey found.
3. The survey also highlighted how fragmented data environments continue to hinder progress. Nearly half of respondents, 47%, said their organizations have the necessary data, but it remains siloed across disconnected systems. Many view interoperability not as foundational infrastructure, but as a project layered on top of existing systems.
4. Despite these challenges, respondents expressed a clear understanding of interoperability’s potential benefits. About 58% cited improved care coordination as a key outcome, while 37% pointed to improved patient safety, reduced medical errors or lower costs and duplication.
5. CIOs from hospitals with more than 500 beds reported they are still unable to fully participate in all four core domains of interoperability: sending, receiving, finding and integrating data.

The post Most health systems lack tools for vendor-agnostic interoperability: Survey appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Artificial intelligence is expected to disproportionately affect routine, clerical and administrative roles, while having a limited near-term impact on overall employment, The Wall Street Journal reported March 24. 

The Journal cited findings from a working paper recently published on the National Bureau of Economic Research website. The study, produced with economists from the Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta and Richmond, surveyed about 750 CFOs across multiple industries between late 2025 and early 2026. 

Five things to know: 

1. Workers in more highly skilled roles, such as engineers and architects, are more likely to keep their jobs, especially if they can utilize AI, according to the report. 

2. John Graham, an economist at Duke University and one of the paper’s authors, told the Journal that employees with jobs that require higher levels of training and education could eventually be affected, “but probably not in 2026.” 

3. Regardless of role, AI is unlikely to eliminate a substantial number of roles in the near-term, according to the report. The study found that AI had essentially no employment effect in 2025. In 2026, CFOs expect that AI will reduce their headcount by about 0.4% compared to what it otherwise would have been.  

4. Companies with 500 or more employees are more likely to cut routine worker roles, while smaller companies plan to hire more skilled technical workers, according to the report. 

5. Another of the study’s authors, Atlanta Fed economist Salomé Baslandze, told the Journal she is optimistic AI will eventually create new types of work. She also expressed concern, however, that many of the roles vulnerable to elimination are stepping stones for moving into the middle class. 

The post AI is coming for admin jobs, CFOs say  appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Across five health systems, behavioral health leaders are seeing a fundamental shift in how integration is financed: moving from siloed service lines and short-term funding toward enterprisewide cost strategies. 

Rather than treating behavioral health as a standalone service, leaders said systems are embedding it across care settings and budgets, reflecting its impact on overall patient outcomes and utilization. 

Arpan Waghray, MD, CEO of Renton, Wash.-based Providence’s Well Being Trust, told Becker’s the shift requires a broader view of where behavioral health fits across the system. 

“We don’t think of behavioral health funding as just a service line,” he said. “Our intent is to think about this in a much broader context. So thinking about all the care that’s delivered outside of the behavioral health specialty for patients … and intentionally building these into the operating budgets of every unit.”

Other leaders echoed the importance of embedding behavioral health into core operations rather than treating it as optional.

Elicia Bunch, vice president of behavioral health at Aurora, Colo.-based UCHealth, said integration must extend into financial and operational structures. 

“When it’s embedded in our operational budgets, reimbursement strategies and comprehensive patient outcomes, it really does become sustainable,” she said.

Tracey Izzard, vice president of behavioral health services at Norfolk, Va.-based Sentara Health, said the system has structured behavioral health as a horizontal service line that spans care settings.

“It’s where we’re combining our health plan, our ambulatory and our acute care, and we are embedding behavioral health along the way,” she said. 

The system’s vertical behavioral health service line includes the behavioral health unit, emergency department, outpatient programs, partial hospitalization, intensive outpatient services and outpatient medication management.

Utilization and costs

Leaders said this shift is driven in part by the significant role behavioral health plays in hospital utilization and costs. Often, patients who could have entered outpatient programs depend on crisis care for social, mental health and substance use needs. 

The financial implications are also substantial.

Mental illness costs the U.S. economy $282 billion annually, researchers at New York City-based Columbia University found. Behavioral health conditions are also linked with up to threefold spending increases for individuals with otherwise similar physical disease burden, according to a study published in 2025 in JAMA Network Open. 

“Since we are a payer and we’ve been scaling services, our goal is to start to measure that, to see if that reduction other organizations are seeing, if we’re realizing that value,” Dawn Zieger, vice president of psychiatry and behavioral health at Danville, Pa.-based Geisinger, told Becker’s.

Ultimately, leaders frame integration as a mechanism to reduce total cost of care and improve system efficiency. Embedding behavioral health into primary care and other settings is seen as key to reducing avoidable costs.

“Continuing to treat it as a one-off or an ancillary service — that’s where we continue to absorb all of that cost,” Ms. Izzard said. “There’s all that extra cost where we can embed it and where we can work hand in glove with primary care. That’s where we start to see the total cost of care reduced.”

At the system level, leaders also emphasize aligning financial incentives across entities to support integration.

“All those expenses and all those revenues are ultimately the system’s,” Mr. Jones said. “We’re trying to avoid the sometimes perverse incentive of thinking, ‘Well, what’s good for the department versus what’s good for the hospital?’ We are thinking about what’s good for the patient, and then let’s figure out how the finances work behind the scenes.” 

Reimbursement challenges

Despite the potential for return on investment, leaders highlighted persistent reimbursement gaps that require alternative financial strategies. In some systems, behavioral health services continue to rely on internal subsidies.

Maurizio Fava, MD, chair of psychiatry at Somerville, Mass.-based Mass General Brigham, said long-standing reimbursement challenges have required systems to step up.

“Our level of reimbursements for services in the state of Massachusetts has always made it hard to actually support the salaries of our clinicians, and so there has always been substantial subsidy of psychiatric services,” he said.

At Geisinger, reimbursement does not cover outpatient services, Ms. Zieger said. She added that fortunately, the system has other specialties including orthopedics and cardiology with a margin to help pay for the services the community needs.

These financial pressures are compounded in systems with a high proportion of Medicaid patients, in which reimbursement rates are typically lower.

“Fifty percent of our payer mix is Medicaid, which is often populations that have social determinants of health challenges,” Ms. Zieger said. “We’re looking really hard at how to optimize our payment, the fee-for-service commercial space and our Medicaid care so that we can make sure we’re able to have sustainable operations. It’s a hard hill to climb.” 

To address these gaps, systems are expanding beyond traditional reimbursement models, including community benefit investments and partnerships.

“Last year, we invested in our community benefits almost $2.1 billion across our seven states. So it’s not an insignificant amount,” Dr. Waghray said. “We’re trying to align our Community Health investment dollars in a way that provides them better support and structure.” 

The bridge between clinical care and community partnerships is also critical, particularly when working with organizations that may have more favorable reimbursement structures, he said. 

Others have worked to align reimbursement models with integrated care delivery. 

“That really includes using collaborative care codes, which are funded primarily under the medical plan, and then also supporting traditional behavioral health benefits where that model works best,” Ms. Bunch said. “A key has really been matching the care model to the reimbursement pathway in a way that really optimizes both the clinical and the business model approach to care.”

Philanthropy, high-margin service lines and grants

Leaders also highlighted the importance of partnerships and alternative funding sources. For example, over the past several months, Los Angeles-based UCLA Health, Monterey, Calif.-based Montage Health and Boston Children’s Hospital have received large gifts for behavioral health. 

“Philanthropy was used as a source of discretionary funding by each hospital and by each investigator,” Dr. Fava said. “Now we have a single team that oversees fundraising and philanthropy. … There will be donors that are going to say, ‘I would like to fund research in this area,’ and that may lift all boats in terms of philanthropic support across the entire department.”

Bernard Jones, vice president for behavioral and mental health and the psychiatry department for Mass General Brigham, said interventional psychiatry and procedural services can help improve financial sustainability.

“We are particularly interested in those sort of cutting edge services delivered through a department of psychiatry that not only help advance patient care significantly, but are often the most favorably reimbursed,” he said. “So thinking about interventional psychiatry and some of our procedural services, and that’s also a good way within an integrating department to make things financially sustainable.” 

Long-term sustainability must be built into financial models, particularly when relying on grants. 

Dr. Waghray cautioned against short-term funding strategies that cannot be maintained.

“The worst thing we can do is get some funding or grant and then support somebody for a short duration of time, and then have to take a service, pull the service back, just because there’s no sustainable pathway,” he said. 

Systems are increasingly evaluating sustainability at the beginning of grant-funded initiatives to avoid these disruptions.

“So how do we make sure on the other end of the grant we understand exactly what we’re going to be able to do,” Ms. Zieger said. “We know that we’ve got to be nimble on the other side of the grant infrastructure.”

Governance

Financial integration is reinforced through governance structures that align decision-making across the system. Ms. Izzard said cross-functional leadership alignment is critical.

“Having those standard committees where you have the CMOs, COOs and CFOs from all three divisions come together to make decisions on how to best proceed in the behavioral health area — a lot of alignment is met when we meet in those areas, but then we can also see where the divergence is.” 

Ms. Bunch added that executive-level prioritization is essential to sustaining progress.

“When behavioral health is represented in executive decision making priority, strategy  and financial planning, it really ensures the work remains central to the organization’s mission and strategy, and that is certainly how UC Health has demonstrated this mission.”

Editor’s note: This is the first of a three part series exploring what behavioral health integration looks like financially, clinically and operationally. Check out Becker’s behavioral health newsletter to see more coverage on the topic.

The post ‘We don’t think of it as just a service line’: How 5 health systems integrate behavioral health into core finances  appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Alpharetta, Ga., is the best small U.S. city for careers, according to a Jan. 13 ranking from CoworkingCafe.

The ranking was developed by analyzing 298 U.S. cities with populations below 250,000. CoworkingCafe evaluated several key metrics on a 100-point scale, including salary, income, cost of living, job market strength, access to healthcare and commute times.

Some of the small cities are also fast-growing communities with new hospital projects, such as Dallas-based Baylor Scott & White Health’s hospital that opened in Frisco, Texas, in July and Arlington-based Texas Health Resources’ hospital in McKinney, Texas, slated to open in 2028.

Here are the top 10 career hotspots with fewer than 250,000 residents, according to CoworkingCafe:

1. Alpharetta, Ga.

2. South Jordan, Utah

3. Mountain View, Calif.

4. Santa Clara, Calif.

5. Palo Alto, Calif.

6. Carmel, Ind.

7. Fishers, Ind.

8. Franklin, Tenn.

9. Kirkland, Wash.

10. Portland, Maine

11. Frisco, Texas

12. Bellevue, Wash.

13. San Ramon, Calif.

14. Boca Raton, Fla.

15. Flower Mound, Texas

16. Troy, Mich.

17. Pflugerville, Texas

18. Richmond, Va.

19. Alexandria, Va.

20. McKinney, Texas

The post 20 best small cities for careers appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Birmingham, Ala.-based UAB Health System is planning a third freestanding emergency department, this time in Oxford, Ala.

UAB St. Vincent’s St. Clair has filed a letter of intent with the Alabama State Health Planning and Development Agency to seek a certificate of need for the project.

The proposed freestanding ED would be developed through a joint venture between UAB Health System, the city of Oxford and Oxford Health Systems, the city’s healthcare authority. 

Oxford Mayor Alton Craft said the city’s rapid growth has outpaced its healthcare infrastructure, creating a need for additional emergency services.

“We approached UAB to fill this need in our community because we know they represent world-class patient care,” Mr. Craft said in a March 20 news release. “This project is only the beginning of healthcare transformation in our region.”

UAB Health System CEO Dawn Bulgarella said proximity to care is a key driver of community health outcomes.

“This project expands care options for Oxford and surrounding communities,” Ms. Bulgarella said. “It will enhance access and support continued improvement of health outcomes across the region.”

She added that the partnership would connect patients in the region to UAB’s broader care delivery network, improving access to specialty care while leveraging scale to help manage costs.

UAB Medicine currently operates freestanding emergency departments in Gardendale, Hoover and Trussville.

“Our other freestanding emergency departments have been game-changers for their communities,” Ms. Bulgarella said. “We hope to make this one a reality in partnership with the city of Oxford soon.”

Additional details, including the facility’s location and timeline, are expected to be announced at a later date.

The post ‘Game-changers for their communities’: UAB plans 3rd freestanding ED appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

South Dakota was found to be the least stressed state, while Louisiana was the most stressed, according to WalletHub’s annual ranking.

WalletHub compared all 50 states across 4 key dimensions — work-related stress, money-related stress, family-related stress, and health- and safety-related stress — which were evaluated using 40 metrics, ranging from residents’ average hours worked per week to the state’s quality of infrastructure. The health- and safety-related component factored in each state’s share of adults in fair or poor health, with diagnoses of depression, mental health, suicide rate and more. Read more about the methodology here.

Here are the 10 most and least stressed states, along with their overall score out of 100:

Most

1. Louisiana: 62.86

2. Kentucky: 58.18

3. New Mexico: 57.65

4. West Virginia: 56.20

5. Arkansas: 55.60

6. Nevada: 53.82

7. Oklahoma: 53.47

8. Oregon: 52.39

9. Mississippi: 52.16

10. Alabama: 50.99

Least

1. South Dakota: 32.35

2. Utah: 32.61

3. Minnesota: 33.50

4. New Hampshire: 33.51

5. Vermont: 33.77

6. Idaho: 35.12

7. North Dakota: 35.84

8. Connecticut: 36.46

9. Massachusetts: 36.54

10. Iowa: 37.28

The post 10 most, least stressed states appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Federal budget policies could put the nation’s nursing faculty workforce under great strain, according to a March 20 JAMA Health Forum viewpoint by two leaders at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

Proposed changes to the U.S. federal budget emphasize short-term recruitment of clinical nursing staff “without thoughtful consideration for the faculty needed to train more nurses, not only for the present moment, but also for decades to come,” according to the viewpoint. 

The piece, “Funding Nurse Recruitment While Defunding Nurse Educators,” is by Joshua Barrett, PhD, RN, the associate director for UNC’s Center for the Business of Health, and Zoey Kernodle, DrPH, the center’s director and a research assistant professor.

The faculty nursing shortage is a significant driver of the nation’s short supply of nursing professionals. 

Dr. Barrett and Dr. Kernodle outlined two budget policy proposals that could harm the U.S. nursing workforce long-term:

1. The Nurse Faculty Loan Program

Drafts of the fiscal 2026 budget — H.R.1, which passed in July — included proposed cuts to federal nursing research and workforce development programs. One of those programs, called the Nurse Faculty Loan Program, faced termination but “ultimately received funding,” the viewpoint said. However, “recurring proposals for its elimination suggest its future remains tenuous.”

“During the 2023 to 2024 academic year, U.S. nursing schools turned away 65,766 qualified applicants, primarily due to insufficient faculty,” the viewpoint said. “Without capacity expansion, nursing schools will continue to limit the total workforce regardless of recruitment program success.”

2. Federal loan limits

One compounder to the potential elimination of the Nurse Faculty Loan Program and broader nurse educator shortage are proposed limits to federal student loans. 

H.R.1 places a $200,000 cap on federal loans for students in professional degree programs. The Education Department proposed removing nursing programs from the “professional” designation and shifting them to “graduate,” which would limit borrowing to $100,000 for students in Master of Science in Nursing and Doctor of Nursing Practice programs. 

DNP graduates account for a significant amount of nursing faculty, the viewpoint said. 

“With loan limit reductions and proposed [Nurse Faculty Loan Program] elimination occurring simultaneously, prospective nursing faculty face a double constraint: reduced borrowing capacity for their education and eliminated loan forgiveness for faculty service,” according to the viewpoint. 

To mitigate the nursing faculty shortage and support the future nursing workforce, Drs. Barrett and Kernodle said policymakers should stabilize and sustain funding the Nurse Faculty Loan Program and address “the academic-clinical salary differential,” as advanced practice registered nurses earn a median salary of $129,480, compared to the median $93,958 salary for nursing faculty.

The post Viewpoint: US nursing workforce faces several risks appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

CMS has finalized a rule to phase out faxing and mailing for healthcare claims documentation.

Four things to know:

1. The Administrative Simplification; Adoption of Standards for Health Care Claims Attachments Transactions and Electronic Signatures Final Rule is projected to save the healthcare industry roughly $781 million annually by establishing national standards for the electronic exchange of clinical documentation, according to a March 20 CMS news release. CMS did not share data behind the estimate.

“The 1980s called, and they want their fax machines back,” CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz, MD, said in the release. “… This new rule will modernize American healthcare by standardizing electronic claims attachments and enabling secure electronic signatures. Because every minute providers save on paperwork is another minute they can spend caring for patients.”

2. The rule also adopts standards for electronic signatures to support the secure, authenticated transmission of claims-related information across healthcare entities.

3. The rule takes effect May 19 and applies to HIPAA-covered entities, including health plans, healthcare clearinghouses and healthcare providers that conduct electronic transactions. Covered entities must comply by May 19, 2028.

4. It establishes the first HIPAA-adopted standards for healthcare claims attachments, allowing for the secure electronic exchange of supporting clinical documentation such as medical records, X-rays and imaging, clinical notes, telemedicine visit documentation and laboratory results, according to a CMS fact sheet.

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As rural hospital leaders guide their organizations through  2026, they are juggling the financial pressure of federal Medicaid changes while looking to state legislatures for tools to stabilize their organizations. 

From Nebraska’s Medicaid work requirements to New Mexico’s updated physician loan forgiveness initiative, the policy landscape is reshaping how rural hospitals recruit, operate and plan for the future. 

Becker’s asked six CEOs which healthcare law or legislative change is most top of mind and how their organizations are preparing.

New Mexico

Several New Mexico bills were signed into law March 6; they are focused on reforming hospital funding, medical malpractice rules and patient billing. David Shaw, CEO of Nor-Lea Hospital District in Lovington, expressed appreciation for the initiatives aimed at enhancing physician recruitment and retention.

“Notably, New Mexico’s anticipated participation in the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact and the revision of the state’s loan forgiveness program for physicians, which increases annual awards to $75,000, represent significant progress,” Mr. Shaw said. “These measures demonstrate that New Mexico is committed to welcoming physicians and valuing their contributions to healthcare.”

Once details regarding the updated loan repayment program are finalized, hospital leadership will prioritize understanding the new provisions so it can inform current providers and integrate the information into recruitment materials, he added.

Nebraska

Superior-based Brodstone Healthcare is preparing for the rollout of Rural Health Transformation Program funds and the changes accompanying HR 1, particularly new Medicaid work requirements, CEO Treg Vyzourek said. The organization is taking an active role in educating the Medicaid population in its region as information is released by the state, he said.

“Nebraska is also taking a more aggressive approach by proposing zero-day retroactive eligibility for patients who may qualify for Medicaid,” Mr. Vyzourek said. “We are highly concerned about the financial impacts of the Medicaid cuts and the implementation of work requirements, especially if zero-day retroactive eligibility is approved.”

Operationally, Brodstone Healthcare anticipates increased costs as a result of added administrative burden associated with the rollout of HR 1 and changes to Medicaid, he added.

Medicaid funding changes are also top of mind for Manuela Banner, RN, president and CEO of Memorial Community Hospital and Health System in Blair.

“We are preparing for increased uncompensated care and continued pressure on already thin margins, while doing everything we can to protect access to essential services in our community,” she said. “While the Rural Health Transformation Program grant is helpful, it was never intended to replace Medicaid dollars and will only go so far in offsetting potential cuts, particularly as a significant portion of the funding in our state is directed to entities that are not hospitals.”

Tim Gullingsrud, CEO of Banner Health’s Ogallala Community Hospital, said the state-directed payment model implemented in 2025 has been transformative in helping to improve its financial performance by raising Medicaid reimbursements.

“However, our top concern for this year is the potential decline in these reimbursements and methodology changes that could threaten our financial stability,” Mr. Gullingsrud said. “We’re also actively working on Rural Health Transformation grant applications to ensure sustainable programs within the five-year funding window, while preparing operational strategies to survive on lower reimbursement rates across all payers.”

In addition to managing reimbursement uncertainty, leaders pointed to disciplined operations and workforce support as priorities.

“Our focus right now is on staying disciplined operationally, supporting our workforce and continuing to advocate for sustainable funding solutions that allow rural providers to keep serving their communities,” Ms. Banner said.

North Dakota

Rural Health Transformation Program funding is one of the biggest areas leaders at Linton Regional Medical Center and Wishek-based South Central Health are closely monitoring, CEO Lukas Fischer, BSN, RN, said.

“These changes have the potential to significantly reshape how rural hospitals deliver care by expanding access to telehealth, care coordination and innovative service models,” Mr. Fischer said. “We are actively aligning our operations and partnerships to take advantage of these opportunities while maintaining financial sustainability. The challenge will be balancing innovation with ongoing workforce limitations that continue to impact rural healthcare delivery.”

Arizona

Gary Kartchner, MSN, RN, CEO of TMC Health’s Benson Hospital and Northern Cochise Community Hospital in Willcox, is focused on how policy changes are affecting access to care, such as uncertainty in Medicaid enrollment and declining affordability in the marketplace, which leave patients at risk of becoming uninsured or delaying care.

“At the same time, cuts to SNAP are increasing food insecurity in our communities, which shows up in worse health outcomes when patients do seek care. We are also seeing growing pressure in bad debt, a clear sign that families are struggling to afford care,” Mr. Kartchner said. “Our focus is on strengthening care coordination and working with community partners to intervene earlier, while continuing to elevate these impacts with policymakers.”

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Of the 50 states and Washington, D.C., the nation’s capital is the most innovative, according to a ranking from personal finance website WalletHub.

The March 18 list evaluated all 50 states and Washington, D.C., using 25 indicators of “innovation friendliness,” including share of STEM professionals and concentration of technology companies. Metrics were graded on a 100-point scale, and each state’s weighted average was used to calculate its innovation index.

Here are the 10 most and least innovative states, according to WalletHub:

Most innovative

1. Washington, D.C.

2. Massachusetts

3. California

4. Colorado 

5. Washington

6. Maryland

7. Virginia

8. Delaware

9. Utah

10. New Jersey

Least innovative

42. Alaska

43. Oklahoma

44. Kentucky

45. Kansas

46. Arkansas

47. Iowa

48. North Dakota

49. West Virginia

50. Louisiana 

51. Mississippi

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A federal judge’s March 16 ruling blocking much of HHS’ recent vaccine policy overhaul is raising new questions about access to respiratory syncytial virus preventive shots for infants. 

In the decision, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts invalidated actions taken by members appointed to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices after HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. restructured the panel in June. The court found the committee was improperly constituted and vacated its recommendations, effectively reinstating the prior childhood immunization schedule and limiting the authority of the reconfigured advisory group.

In January, the CDC adopted a revised vaccine schedule that cut the number of vaccines routinely recommended for children and adolescents from 18 to 11.

The March 16 ruling has created near-term uncertainty for clinicians, states and public health officials, who are working to understand its implications for vaccine policy and coverage, The New York Times reported. Experts told the news outlet that the back-and-forth on vaccine policy is fueling confusion across care settings, particularly as the Trump administration is expected to appeal the decision, raising the possibility that the policy landscape could change again within days.

One area of concern is access to monoclonal antibody products that protect against RSV. Because at least one product was added to federal recommendations under the now-invalidated advisory committee, its coverage status is unclear. The disruption could affect whether certain RSV preventive therapies remain available at no cost to eligible children, depending on how federal agencies and payers respond in the coming weeks.

“It would be unfortunate if the court ruling were to limit access to a critical prevention tool for infants and young children, especially as R.S.V. activity is rising, with the highest rates of severe illness among those under age 4,” Robert Hopkins Jr., MD, medical director for the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, told the Times. 

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Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Healthcare’s executive compensation structure underscores a clear industry reality: financial performance — particularly EBITDA — remains the dominant driver of leadership pay.

According to HCA’s 2025 proxy report, published March 13, 80% of executive incentive compensation is tied to EBITDA performance, with the remaining 20% linked to quality and patient care metrics such as infection rates, mortality and patient experience scores. This weighting reflects a strong emphasis on financial outcomes, even as health systems face increasing pressure to prioritize quality, access and workforce stability.

The structure also reinforces how the for-profit hospital operator defines success. 

EBITDA targets are set within a relatively narrow range — with threshold performance at 4% below target and maximum at 4% above — and can yield payouts of up to 200% for that portion of incentives. In 2025, HCA executives achieved near-maximum performance, contributing to total bonus payouts of nearly 196% of target.

For example, HCA CEO Sam Hazen saw his overall compensation increase by $2.7 million in 2025 as the health system reported a $6.8 billion in net income on revenue of $75.6 billion, according to the report. Mr. Hazen earned more than $5.4 million in nonequity incentive plan compensation in 2025. 

Notably, quality metrics — while present — are partially dependent on financial performance. 

If EBITDA falls below 90% of target, no payout is awarded for the quality portion of incentives. This design positions financial performance as a gatekeeper, even for measures tied to patient outcomes and experience.

The emphasis on financial performance aligns with broader critiques of how hospital economics — and executive incentives — are structured.

Speaking on “The Healthcare Bridge” podcast, Mark Cuban — entrepreneur and co-founder of Cost Plus Drugs Co. — argued that hospital performance is often driven less by operational efficiency and more by market leverage. 

“One, I have market dominance, and I get to say, ‘f— you,’ to everybody and the insurance companies, right? I don’t need you, because I’m going to get my own patients too,” Mr. Cuban, who  said. “Two, I don’t have enough patient flow, so I need you insurance companies to send me patients, and so I’ll do the deal that you want me to do, because otherwise I don’t have a patient funnel.”

He also suggested that executive compensation structures can incentivize growth for scale rather than long-term sustainability. 

“I think part of the challenge is [how] most CEOs are rewarded. Hospital CEOs are rewarded by revenues and scale, and so they default to more buildings,” he said. “If this 100-bed hospital is not my final destination, I want to be the 60-hospital, 6 zillion beds, because that’s where I’m making $10 million a year.”

For hospital and health system leaders, this model — and Mr. Cuban’s critique — highlight a key tension: whether compensation structures are truly aligned with long-term value, or primarily with financial growth and market position.

Editor’s note: Becker’s has reached out to HCA for comment on this story and will update this story as more information becomes available.

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A rising demand for adequate nurse staffing is pushing some hospitals to expand their recruitment strategies to nurses who had left the bedside.

Adequate staffing made national headlines during the COVID-19 pandemic, and has been a core issue for many hospitals ever since. But in the last year, its importance has become central as studies and organizations hone in on staffing levels as a key issue in the industry.

• A Philadelphia-based University of Pennsylvania survey found the majority of nurses who left bedside roles in recent years are willing to return, and adequate staffing levels are the factor that would reattract them.

• Another study of U.S. magnet hospitals found facilities where nurses report “enough nurses to get the work done” have better physician outcomes.

• The Joint Commission has formally recognized nurse staffing as a national performance goal, meaning hospitals seeking accreditation must meet certain standards related to staffing and oversight. 

• Adequate staffing is also still at the center of many union negotiations and nurse strikes.

Becker’s reached out to CNOs to find out if they are actively working on recruiting nurses back to the bedside. Every nurse leader said it is, but the ways they attract nurses back to the bedside differs.

Note: Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Maribeth McLaughlin, BSN, RN. Chief Nurse Executive and Vice President of Patient Care Services at UPMC (Pittsburg): Every nurse is part of the pipeline. It doesn’t matter whether they’ve left for ambulatory care, virtual nursing, work-from-home, we’re looking to bring any and all of them back to the bedside. As part of that effort, we looked at our education model and asked: how do we build something that supports the new graduate, the brand-new nurse straight out of school, as well as the returning nurse?

What we moved to is a system known as the tiered skill acquisition model. It’s an evidence-based model that allows us to standardize our approach so that everyone receives all the necessary components, while also individualizing it based on where each nurse is in their journey. The tiered structure ensures everyone gets the right resources and materials, but it’s flexible enough to meet each nurse where they are. For a nurse who’s returning to the bedside, probably the biggest challenge is technology. Many returning nurses still have their critical thinking skills intact; it’s really about bringing those skills back to the forefront and getting them current on the technology. We tailor their orientation accordingly.

An experienced nurse who’s been away is still looking for work-life harmony. They’re trying to find what they need to make work fit within their life. That’s where our career ladder and our various programs come in. 

We also allow people to come in and shadow. I actually just spoke with a nurse who has been working alongside physicians in research, is moving back to the Pittsburgh region, and wants to explore returning to the bedside. She hasn’t done it in a long time, but she’s feeling disconnected from her patients. We talked about how we could bring her in, let her shadow for a while, and I spent a good amount of time speaking with her individually about this life change, because I think that matters. It’s not just about “come back and get a job.” It has to work within the whole of their life. Making sure it’s a good fit from the beginning is another critical piece of what we do.

Deana Sievert, DNP, MSN, RN. Senior Vice President and CNO at Rush University Medical Center (Chicago): We see tremendous value in recruiting nurses who left the bedside and helping them get back to caring for patients again. While we are fortunate to have many tenured staff who remain at the bedside — speaking volumes to our strong nursing culture — we are still focused on trying to bringing more back into these roles. 

For example, we have boomerang campaigns where we reach out to eligible staff who have left and simply invite them back. Sometimes we find that staff end up realizing the “grass is not always greener,” and they are very interested in returning to Rush. We will be adding new, regular touchpoints with those who have left to highlight new opportunities that become available and would be a good fit for a former nurse. The focus there is to keep connecting until something resonates with them to consider returning. 

But more importantly, we are working hard to not lose them from the bedside in the first place. Rush is fortunate to have a robust shared governance system in place that helps us work with the tenured staff to better meet their needs. One of the messages we recently received was the need to find different ways to recognize our tenured staff with more than 15 years at the bedside.  

We are also working closely with those seasoned nurses to design different staffing models that allow for fewer weekend commitments, fewer holiday commitments and other perks that our nurses have identified as things they would appreciate. 

Courtney Vose, DNP, RN. Senior Vice President and CNO of Yale New Haven (Conn.) Hospital: There is only one thing that enhances great nursing — the added value of wisdom and experience. We work in close partnership with our nursing leaders, talent acquisition, finance and marketing to build strong, sustainable pipelines across every care area. Safe staffing, defined by us as staffing that fully accounts for volume, acuity and workload, is our number one priority.

We review our staffing performance three times a day and continuously adjust our plans based on real-time feedback from frontline RNs. This disciplined, data-driven approach strengthens the resilience of our current team, accelerates recruitment and creates the conditions that invite experienced nurses back to the bedside.

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