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Emergency medicine physicians per capita vary more than fourfold across the U.S., from 51.32 per 100,000 residents in the District of Columbia to 11.55 in Alabama, according to data from KFF and the U.S. Census Bureau. 

Becker’s used KFF’s count of professionally active emergency medicine physicians, sourced from Redi-Data as of May, and calculated per capita rates using the latest Census Bureau state population estimates. Totals were found by dividing each state’s total ED physicians by its population and multiplying by 100,000.

Washington, D.C. topped the list by a wide margin, at 51.32 ED physicians per 100,000 residents — about 20 points ahead of second-place Michigan. The gap is likely a denominator effect rather than a staffing story: the capital’s small resident population (about 690,000) sits alongside a dense cluster of academic medical centers and regional referral hospitals that serve a much larger regional patient base than the resident count reflects.

Nationwide, there are 67,617 professionally active emergency medicine physicians, or 19.78 per 100,000 residents. 

Here are states ranked by number of ED physicians per 100,000 residents.

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The District of Columbia has the highest concentration of general surgeons in the U.S., with 71.79 general surgeons per capita, according to a Becker’s analysis of state-level general surgeon counts from KFF and 2025 U.S. population estimates.

Idaho has the lowest concentration of general surgeons per capita at 9.66.

The number of general surgeons per 100,000 residents was calculated by dividing the total number of general surgeons in each state by that state’s total population, then multiplying the result by 100,000. 

Here are the states, ranked by number of general surgeons per 100,000 residents:

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Scottsdale, Ariz., is the best place in the U.S. to rent, largely because of its quality of life, according to a July 7 ranking from personal finance website WalletHub.

To develop the list of the best local rental markets, WalletHub compared 182 U.S. cities, including the 150 most populated and at least two of the most populated from each state. It evaluated 21 metrics across rental market and affordability and quality of life, including rental affordability, cost of living, job market and safety.

As many U.S. cities face rising housing costs, health systems have taken employee housing into their own hands to ensure recruitment and retention. One example is Atlanta-based Emory University, which is renovating two buildings to house staff at Emory Healthcare. It will create more than 50 rental apartments for staff whose salaries fall within specific levels.

Here are the 10 best and worst places to rent in the U.S., per WalletHub:

Best

1. Scottsdale, Ariz.

2. Gilbert, Ariz.

3. Chandler, Ariz.

4. Overland Park, Kan.

5. Columbia, Md.

6. Peoria, Ariz.

7. Bismarck, N.D.

8. Huntsville, Ala.

9. Sioux Falls, S.D.

10. Amarillo, Texas

Worst

173. Shreveport, La.

174. Huntington, W.Va.

175. Augusta, Ga.

176. New Orleans

177. Newark, N.J.

178. Akron, Ohio

179. Memphis, Tenn.

180. Jackson, Miss.

181. Cleveland

182. Detroit

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The District of Columbia, New York and Massachusetts have the most physicians per capita, while Mississippi, Alabama and Nevada have the fewest, according to Bureau of Labor statistics and Census data.

Becker’s used the bureau’s latest data — 2025 statistics — to find the total number of physicians and used Census data to calculate the number of physicians per capita using state population totals in 2025. Becker’s then used the bureau’s and Census data to also find the physicians per capita for 2024.

Nationwide, there were 754,760 employed physicians in 2025, up from 717,900 in 2024. Between 2024 and 2025, Arkansas and Alaska had the highest increase in physicians per capita, while Mississippi and Wyoming had the largest cut in physicians per capita.

Here are the total employed physicians, along with the physicians per capita in 2025 and the percent change in physicians per capita compared to 2024.

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The nurse practitioner workforce is projected to grow 11% annually through 2030, far outpacing projected growth for physician assistants and physicians, according to workforce estimates published in Health Affairs.

Researchers from Columbia University, Brandeis University, George Washington University and New York University forecast physician supply will continue growing about 1% annually through 2030, while physician assistant supply is projected to grow 5.6% annually. By 2030, the combined number of nurse practitioners and physician assistants is expected to approach the size of the physician workforce, with an estimated 912,265 clinicians, compared with 1,068,016 physicians. The estimates are based on U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey data through 2023.

The authors said the projections are higher than previous federal estimates from the Health Resources and Services Administration because they incorporate more recent workforce trends, particularly the rapid expansion of younger nurse practitioners entering the profession.

Researchers said the differing growth rates are largely driven by accelerated growth among nurse practitioners younger than 40 years old compared with slower growth among physician assistants in the same age group.

“As the U.S. population ages and demand for care grows, NPs and PAs are well positioned to fill critical gaps, and newly graduated NPs will constitute a rapidly growing share of the workforce in the near term,” the authors wrote. “Health systems that invest now in onboarding, interprofessional training and team-based care models will be better prepared to capitalize on the opportunities and manage the transitions that accompany this workforce evolution.”

The authors also said policymakers should ensure regulations and payment policies “more effectively leverage this growing workforce to address geographic and specialty shortages.”

The researchers noted several limitations. The projections assume recent workforce trends continue and do not account for future policy changes, economic shifts or changes in education capacity that could affect clinician supply. They also rely on self-reported Census Bureau survey data and measure workforce size rather than clinical hours worked or specialty distribution.

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Nurse AI adoption is accelerating faster than hospitals are building strategies to support it, a report from Incredible Health found.

Healthcare staffing company Incredible Health released its 2026 Annual State of Nursing report July 7. The findings are based on a national survey of 2,240 U.S. nurses. The report also incorporates platform data from Incredible Health’s network of 1.5 million U.S. healthcare professionals. The full report is accessible from Incredible Health here.

Here are six key findings from the report:

1. Forty-four percent of nurses now use AI at work, up from 15% a year earlier.

2. Many nurses reported receiving little formal preparation to use AI tools. Forty-six percent said they received no AI training in the past year, while 5% said they received formal training that adequately prepared them.

3. Among nurses who use AI, the most common applications were documentation and charting (37%), creating patient education materials (37%) and drug or clinical reference lookups (32%).

4. Nurses who received AI training were more likely to report saving more than an hour per day using the technology than nurses who did not receive training (24% versus 16%). At the same time, half of AI users said their most recent use of AI saved little or no time.

5. The survey also found nurses who were involved in selecting AI tools were more likely to use them than those who were not consulted. Eighty-one percent of nurses who helped choose AI tools reported using them, compared with 62% of nurses who were never consulted.

6. One in five nurses said AI tools “just appear” in their workplace without a plan or explanation, and only 17% of nurses working in organizations that already use AI said their employer’s strategy for the technology is clear.

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Among organizations, 23% said clinician burnout is not a current focus, compared to 17% that reported its their No. 1 concern.

In a LinkedIn poll, Becker’s asked, “Where does clinician burnout rank among your organization’s top operational concerns heading into the second half of 2026?”

The poll received 323 votes and was conducted June 23. Becker’s does not have insights on the respondents’ organizations or roles.

The results:

No. 1 — it’s our top worry: 17%

In our top 3: 43%

Higher vs. last year: 17%

Not a current focus: 23%

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Health systems are paying twice for the same clinical talent. Most have not figured that out yet.

At large academic medical centers, hundreds of clinical students rotate through hospitals and outpatient sites every year. They work beside nurses, therapists, and pharmacists. They are evaluated daily by preceptors who form fast, accurate judgments about who they would hire. Most of those students do eventually get hired somewhere. Usually not where they trained.

That pattern repeats across nearly every health system in the country. It is one of the most expensive inefficiencies in clinical workforce strategy, and it is hiding in plain sight. Health systems like Valley Health and Sarah Bush Lincoln have started to address it. What they found reveals a structural gap most organizations have not examined.

The investment is already being made

Health systems are not passive participants in clinical education. Preceptors carry real supervisory load. Coordinators manage placement logistics across dozens of school partners. Compliance teams verify documentation. Departments absorb the productivity cost of training students in live care environments.

That investment produces something a job interview simply cannot replicate: weeks of real-environment evaluation across clinical judgment, communication, coachability, and culture fit. The signal is there. The question is whether it ever reaches a hiring decision.

For most health systems, it does not. Students complete rotations, graduate, and enter the open job market. The health system that trained them often reconnects only after paying agency premiums to fill the same role.

The NSI 2025 National Health Care Retention and RN Staffing Report puts the average cost of turnover for a bedside RN at $61,110, with each percentage point change in RN turnover costing the average hospital an additional $289,000 per year. When you hold that number up against the cost of training a clinician, losing them to the open market, and paying to recruit a replacement, the math becomes hard to ignore.

Where the breakdown actually happens

The problem sits between two functions that almost never share infrastructure. Clinical education manages student placements, preceptors, and school relationships. Talent acquisition manages requisitions and pipelines. Both teams directly shape workforce outcomes but neither typically has visibility into what the other is doing.

A student who performs well on rotation, expresses interest in employment, and earns strong feedback from a preceptor can still fall completely out of view. The preceptor’s evaluation lives in a hallway conversation. The student’s interest sits in a survey or an email. No one has a consolidated picture of which rotation sites, departments, or school partners are consistently producing strong future hires.

What looks like missed recruitment is also operational drag: coordinators spend the majority of their time on manual placement tracking, document chasing, and reconciling school-specific intake processes. Compliance gets managed reactively, creating last-minute delays and audit exposure. Capacity decisions get made on instinct because real-time visibility across departments and locations does not exist. And preceptor intelligence about student quality disappears at the end of every rotation.

The intent to hire from rotations is already there. “We see every rotation as a two-way interview,” says Tracey McCord, MSN, RN, NPD-BC, Professional Development Coordinator at Sarah Bush Lincoln Health System. “We’re evaluating students, and they’re evaluating us. We want them to leave thinking: this is where I want to work. They are our future workforce, and we’ve always known that.” That belief is common across health systems. The infrastructure to act on it is not.

A different way to operate

A small number of health systems have started treating clinical education as workforce infrastructure rather than an administrative function. The shift shows up in how the work is organized.

Placement coordination runs through a single system across disciplines, locations, and school partners. Compliance is enforced before day one, with audit-ready records available on demand. Preceptor evaluations attach to the student record and travel with it. Leadership sees capacity, demand, and onboarding completion in real time. And rotation performance feeds directly into hiring conversations through a structured pipeline.

At Valley Health, one person manages close to 1,500 students a year. Halle Esparza, Academic Services Coordinator, coordinates rotations across six hospitals, 188 locations, and 25 disciplines. In 2025, that meant 1,859 coordinated placements. Getting to that scale required infrastructure. And infrastructure is what makes a hiring pipeline possible, because you cannot track which students you want to hire if you cannot track which students are in the building.

The Maryland-DC Nursing Collaborative coordinates roughly 25,000 nursing placements a year across more than 30 hospitals and 30 schools on a shared platform. That kind of scale is not operationally feasible without standardized infrastructure underneath it.

The organizations that have made this shift describe the same pattern consistently. Coordinator hours redirect from data entry to student experience. Compliance exposure drops. And workforce planning gets earlier and sharper because rotation data is finally legible at the leadership level.

The takeaway

Workforce shortages will not be solved through external recruiting alone. Clinical rotation programs are generating pipeline-ready candidates and decision-grade workforce intelligence every single day. Most health systems are not equipped to capture any of it.

McCord speaks for clinical education leaders at health systems across the country: “They are our future workforce, and we’ve always known that.” The health systems that have stopped paying twice for that future built the infrastructure to identify, develop, and recruit their best rotation students before a competitor did.

Valley Health, Sarah Bush Lincoln Health System, and the Maryland-DC Nursing Collaborative all run on Exxat One. So do health systems and consortiums across the country working to close the gap between placement and pipeline.

The most underrated workforce lever in health systems may have been in the building the whole time.

Learn more about Exxat One here.

The post The Most Underrated Workforce Lever in Health Systems appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

At least 15 rural hospitals have closed in the last year. Hundreds more are operating under sustained financial pressure from Medicaid cuts, reimbursement gaps and a workforce market that increasingly tilts toward larger systems. For the executives running small community hospitals, financial survival has become a daily discipline requiring thoughtful decision-making.

Justin Harris, became CEO of Daviess Community Hospital in Washington, Ind., in July 2025. The most consequential decision of his first year in the role was a partnership choice. The hospital had operated under a management agreement since 2017 and when Mr. Harris took the helm, Daviess Community entered a new arrangement with Evansville, Ind.-based Deaconess Health System — a regional operator whose model, is built explicitly around keeping care in the communities it serves rather than routing patients toward larger tertiary centers. Within roughly six months, the hospital shifted from losing millions of dollars each month to posting positive margins.

“That takes partnership, that takes commitment to the community, that takes involvement from the community,” Mr. Harris said. “And that is exactly what we’re doing at Daviess Community Hospital.”

The revenue cycle is ground no executive can afford to cede. Mr. Harris was direct about the personal role he believes leaders at every level must play.

“You are never too big to not be involved in the revenue cycle,” he said. “We need to be in our financials and revenue cycle, and we need to make decisions on a daily basis about how to lead the organization.”

He described recoupments, readmissions and pre-authorizations as executive responsibilities rather than back-office concerns.

“If we don’t make any money, it’s hard to provide good healthcare,” Mr. Harris said. “You don’t have the ability to bring services, you don’t have the ability to buy supplies, pay your staff.”

Eric Price, CFO of Schoolcraft Memorial Hospital in Manistique, Mich., arrived at the same conclusion. He watched successive waves of regulatory urgency — ICD-10, ACA implementation, the current rural transformation funding debates — generate intense pressure that generally resolves within months. For a 12-bed critical access hospital, chasing each one carries a cost in leadership bandwidth and organizational focus that small teams cannot easily absorb.

“The initial surge of information will usually resolve itself,” he said. “In six to eight months, things tend to settle down.”

That long view shapes how Schoolcraft evaluates any significant initiative. Mr. Price asks where a strategy will stand five or 10 years in the future and then collaborates with his team on the best path forward. The initiatives that can’t hold up under that question don’t command the organization’s attention.

“We’ve got to maintain that long-term strategy,” he said. “I’m hoping to come back here in five years and say, hey — we weathered that storm, and now we’re done with this new one.”

In practice, that also means staying anchored to patient care when financial pressures are pulling in multiple directions.

“The most decisive thing we’ve done is ensuring that among all the change we don’t lose sight of patient quality care,” said Mr. Price. “The fact that at the end of the day, especially in rural America, it’s our family members. It’s our mothers, our neighbors, people we grew up with and we’ll see them on the street and at the grocery store. We’ve got to stay focused on patient care and not lose sight of quality and access.”

He is equally clear that financial leadership demands physical presence in the building. A CFO who manages from a spreadsheet is ineffective.

“If you’re sitting at your desk, you’re not rounding on the med-surg unit, checking in on your OR team, having conversations with physicians, you may be a little behind the power curve already,” he said. “I need to know what’s going on so I can react effectively.”

JohnRich Levin, chief nursing officer at Reeves Regional Health in Pecos, Texas, relies on operational simplicity to weather storms. Reeves Regional is a critical access hospital in West Texas where the nearest major city is an hour and a half away. In that environment, complexity becomes a liability.

He described the limits of predictive analytics in a setting built on personal, direct knowledge of the patient population.

“You can’t be too complicated in a rural facility,” he said. “We have this AI technology, and we have all these things going on. And yet, we know that much of them don’t really apply until we actually desperately really need them. How do you apply predictive analytics when you know who your patients are and you actually know when they are not showing up and you wonder what’s going on with them? There’s nothing that could be replaced by human interaction.”

His emphasis is on workforce development, building the clinical versatility and leadership competency that a small team needs when backup is not nearby. The move from 20 years at a large Houston facility to rural West Texas reinforced a lesson Mr. Levin now applies at Reeves Regional: headcount and readiness are not the same thing.

“You’ve got to assess the kind of staff that you have and build them from there,” Mr. Levin said.

Across all three accounts, culture emerged as the variable that determines whether financial improvements hold. Operations and margins can shift relatively quickly under disciplined leadership. Whether those gains last is harder to influence.

“We can change our operations and financials, and sometimes pretty quickly,” Mr. Harris said. “But if your team is not on board, if your medical staff is not on board, then it’s hard to make that last and be sustainable.”

The post The discipline helping rural hospitals survive appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Fremont, Calif., ranks as the city with the lowest health and safety stress, while Memphis, Tenn., is the most stressed, WalletHub found. 

WalletHub compared 182 cities, including the 150 most populated U.S. cities plus at least two of the most populated cities in each state. Each city was compared across 39 metrics in four dimensions: work stress, financial stress, family stress, and health and safety stress. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with 100 representing the highest level of stress. 

In health stress, the report tracked the percentage of adults in fair or poor health and found a three times difference between the worst and best cities for this metric. Four cities tied for the highest percentage of adults in fair/poor health: San Antonio, Texas; Louisville, Ky.; Shreveport, La.; Brownsville, Texas. The city with the lowest percentage was Cheyenne, Wyo.

Here are the cities with the highest and lowest health and safety stress, along with their total stress score.

Most stressed in health and safety

1. Memphis, Tenn.: 59.24
2. Detroit, Mich.: 62.78
3. Shreveport, La.: 57.75
4. Cleveland, Ohio: 59.35
5. Huntington, W.Va.: 50.32
6. Charleston, W.Va.: 45.97
7. Gulfport, Miss.: 56.90
8. Houston, Texas: 54.18
9. Dover, Del.: 49.86
10. Jackson, Miss.: 56.03
11. Birmingham, Ala.: 54.42
12. Springfield, Mo.: 44.07
13. St. Louis, Mo.: 54.60
14. Augusta, Ga.: 50.37
15. Kansas City, Mo.: 44.67
16. Knoxville, Tenn.: 43.98
17. San Antonio, Texas: 51.37
18. Montgomery, Ala.: 52.59
19. Fort Smith, Ark.: 48.55
20. Baton Rouge, La.: 52.95 

Least stressed

1. Fremont, Calif.: 26.16
2. Irvine, Calif.: 31.06
3. San Francisco, Calif.: 36.75
4. Jersey City, N.J.: 36.25
5. San Jose, Calif.: 31.48
6. Columbia, Md.: 35.21
7. Overland Park, Kan.: 30.83
8. South Burlington, Vt.: 26.22
9. San Diego, Calif.: 35.70
10. Chula Vista, Calif.: 38.09
11. Santa Clarita, Calif.: 39.45
12. Scottsdale, Ariz.: 36.17
13. Gilbert, Ariz.: 34.09
14. Chandler, Ariz.: 35.88
15. Yonkers, N.Y.: 37.93
16. Burlington, Vt.: 31.62
17. Raleigh, N.C.: 37.26
18. Huntington Beach, Calif.: 37.28
19. Madison, Wis.: 32.80
20. Garden Grove, Calif.: 38.99 

The post 20 most, least health stressed US cities appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

The nursing home workforce gained 3,300 jobs in June, bringing the total number of workers up to 1,586,600, the American Health Care Association said in a July 6 news release shared with Becker’s.

The association used the Bureau of Labor Statistics to find current nursing home workforce statistics. Here is what to know about the current state of the workforce:

1. Both nursing home staff turnover and temporary staff agency use have declined since 2022.

2. Nursing home and residential care facilities’ staffing is rebounding. Since the pandemic, the number of workers in nursing facilities has steadily risen. As of May, the industry employs about 3.49 million people, up from 2.96 million at the industry’s lowest point in January 2022. 

3. On June 25, the Supreme Court ended Temporary Protected Status for Haitian and Syrian citizens, clearing the way for the federal government to deport hundreds of thousands of workers. The ruling puts more than 330,000 Haitians and more than 6,000 Syrians at risk of deportation, Americans for Immigrant Justice said. The nursing home industry relies heavily on immigrant labor, which makes up about 28% of the long-term care workforce.

4. By 2030, all 73 million Baby Boomers will be at least 65 years old. Meanwhile, a growing shortage of registered nurses and licensed practical nurses is projected by 2038.

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For years, labor dominated the hospital expense conversation. Staffing shortages, travel nurse premiums and wage competition consumed the attention of CFOs and operations leaders across the country. Recent data from Kaufman Hall shows times have changed.

Labor costs have stabilized into a relatively predictable range while drugs, supplies, purchased services and more have become the harder problem to solve.

Drug and non-labor expenses are now growing faster than labor in nearly every region and at nearly every hospital size, and unlike labor costs, they offer fewer obvious levers for management to pull. Labor expense growth is holding in a relatively tight band across the industry, roughly 3% to 5% year-over-year regardless of geography or bed size.

Non-labor and drug expenses show no such consistency. Double-digit increases represent a structural shift in where financial pressure is originating.

The geographic divergence is also worth noting. Hospitals in the South are managing the most balanced expense profile, with all five major categories growing at roughly the same pace. The West and Midwest face a materially different picture, with non-labor and drug costs accelerating well above the national average. For health system leaders operating across multiple regions, that divergence complicates any systemwide cost management strategy.

What the data cannot capture, but what CFOs understand acutely, is that this expense growth is arriving alongside worsening payer mix. Bad debt and charity care are rising year-over-year across every region and bed size, meaning hospitals are absorbing higher costs while simultaneously collecting less on the revenue side. Expense growth that might be manageable in a stable reimbursement environment becomes significantly more threatening when the payer mix is eroding at the same time.

Here are 60 statistics on hospital expense growth based on Kaufman Hall’s National Hospital Flash Report, which includes data from 1,300-plus hospitals gathered by Strata Decision Technology.

Overall national trends (year-over-year, April 2026 vs. April 2025)

1. Total expense per calendar day: +7%
2. Labor expense per calendar day: +4%
3. Non-labor expense per calendar day: +9%
4. Drug expense per calendar day: +9%
5. Purchased service expense per calendar day: +4%

By region (year-over-year, April 2026 vs. April 2025)

West

6. Total expense per calendar day: +9%
7. Labor expense per calendar day: +5%
6. Non-labor expense per calendar day: +13%
9. Drug expense per calendar day: +17%
10. Purchased service expense per calendar day: +8%

Midwest

11. Total expense per calendar day: +8%
12. Labor expense per calendar day: +3%
13. Non-labor expense per calendar day: +10%
14. Drug expense per calendar day: +9%
15. Purchased service expense per calendar day: +5%

South

16. Total expense per calendar day: +6%
17. Labor expense per calendar day: +6%
18. Non-labor expense per calendar day: +6%
19. Drug expense per calendar day: +9%
20. Purchased service expense per calendar day: +2%

Northeast / Mid-Atlantic

21. Total expense per calendar day: +6%
22. Labor expense per calendar day: +4%
23. Non-labor expense per calendar day: +11%
24. Drug expense per calendar day: +8%
25. Purchased service expense per calendar day: +1%

Great Plains

26. Total expense per calendar day: +5%
27. Labor expense per calendar day: +3%
28. Non-labor expense per calendar day: +9%
29. Drug expense per calendar day: +11%
30. Purchased service expense per calendar day: +5%

By hospital bed size (year-over-year, April 2026 vs. April 2025)

0-25 beds

31. Total expense per calendar day: +6.1%
32. Labor expense per calendar day: +3.0%
33. Non-labor expense per calendar day: +7.7%
34. Drug expense per calendar day: -0.6%
35. Purchased service expense per calendar day: +2.1%

26-99 beds

36. Total expense per calendar day: +7.4%
37. Labor expense per calendar day: +4.2%
38. Non-labor expense per calendar day: +9.8%
39. Drug expense per calendar day: +10.5%
40. Purchased service expense per calendar day: +1.4%

100-199 beds

41. Total expense per calendar day: +8.0%
42. Labor expense per calendar day: +4.3%
43. Non-labor expense per calendar day: +9.4%
44. Drug expense per calendar day: +9.1%
45. Purchased service expense per calendar day: +8.1%

200-299 beds

46. Total expense per calendar day: +5.1%
47. Labor expense per calendar day: +4.5%
48. Non-labor expense per calendar day: +7.7%
49. Drug expense per calendar day: +13.6%
50. Purchased service expense per calendar day: +5.0%
51. Total expense per calendar day: +8.0%

300-499 beds

52. Labor expense per calendar day: +4.8%
53. Non-labor expense per calendar day: +10.4%
54. Drug expense per calendar day: +9.8%
55. Purchased service expense per calendar day: +5.2%

500+ beds

56. Total expense per calendar day: +6.6%
57. Labor expense per calendar day: +4.0%
58. Non-labor expense per calendar day: +9.2%
59. Drug expense per calendar day: +13.5%
60. Purchased service expense per calendar day: +1.1%

The post 60 statistics on hospital expenses in mid-2026 appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Healthcare added 21,500 jobs in June, slowing down from the average monthly gain of 38,000 over the past year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Here are four things to know from the July 2 jobs report:

1. Hospitals added 9,200 jobs in June, up from a revised 6,800 in May.

2. Ambulatory healthcare services added 8,000 jobs, including 3,300 in home health care.

3. Nursing and residential care facilities added 4,300 jobs.

4. The U.S. economy added 57,000 jobs overall in June, with continued gains in professional and business services, social assistance and healthcare.

The post Healthcare job growth slows to 21,500 in June: 4 things to know appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

The nation’s age-adjusted death rate fell 4.6% in 2025 to 689.2 deaths per 100,000 people — the lowest rate ever recorded in the U.S. — according to provisional CDC data published July 2.

An estimated 3,094,593 people died in the U.S. in 2025, according to the report from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, which reflects 99.9% of 2025 death records processed as of May 10. The total number of deaths increased from 3,072,666 in 2024 even as the rate declined.

Five things to know from the report: 

1. Death rates fell for every age group and for both sexes. The age-adjusted rate for males (811.1 per 100,000) remained well above the rate for females (582.9).

2. Heart disease remained the leading cause of death with 694,708 deaths, followed by cancer (622,832) and unintentional injuries (184,265). Deaths from heart disease and cancer both increased from 2024.

3. Influenza and pneumonia, recorded together, climbed from the 11th to the 8th leading cause of death, with 56,511 deaths in 2025. The year prior, pneumonia and the flu claimed 48,139 lives. Suicide decreased from the 10th to the 11th leading cause, with 48,789 deaths in 2025.

4. Racial disparities persisted. Age-adjusted death rates were highest for Black Americans (869 per 100,000) and increased for American Indian and Alaska Native people (from 786.1 to 803.8) and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander people (from 682.7 to 746). 

The CDC cautioned that rate changes for smaller populations may be skewed by revised census population estimates.

5. The figures are provisional and will likely change as remaining records are processed, particularly unintentional injury deaths, which are reported with a longer lag, meaning the final count will likely be higher. The National Center for Health Statistics typically releases final mortality data about 11 months after the end of each calendar year.

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There’s a widening gap between what a nursing degree certifies and what a hospital unit actually demands in practice, nursing leaders say.

New nurses are arriving on the job less prepared for the nuances and complexity of clinical care, leaving hospitals and health systems to increasingly shoulder the additional training and education required for real-world practice.

Many nursing schools are built to produce graduates who pass their licensing exams on the first try, nursing executives told Becker’s, not graduates who are ready for the floor. New data from the National Council of State Boards of Nursing shows registered nurse candidates passed the National Council Licensure Examination-RN exam at a 74.4% rate in the first half of 2026, up from 69.1% in 2025.

Holly Muller, DNP, RN, senior vice president and system chief nursing officer of Presbyterian Healthcare Services in Albuquerque, N.M., has been circling this challenge inside her own system, though she’s not alone. 

“I hear this from my peers across the country,” she told Becker’s. “They all have mitigation strategies in place, but what’s happened is, as employers, we’ve had to absorb work that may have — in previous ways in schools — been done to a greater degree than it seems to be done [now].”

Dr. Muller highlighted three specific deficits she sees among new nurses on day one: a lack of critical thinking; compassionate, authentic communication; and basic hands-on experience with clinical procedures.

Several forces are compounding this gap. More low-acuity care has shifted to ambulatory settings over the past 15 years, meaning the patients who remain in acute care are sicker and more medically complex than they were a decade ago. Nursing students who trained during the pandemic, when clinical rotations moved partly or fully virtual, also missed hands-on hours their predecessors had. And the pipeline of experienced nurses available to backfill and mentor is itself shrinking, according to Dr. Muller, since seasoned nurses are largely either settled into roles they do not want to leave or approaching retirement.

The critical thinking skills gap shows up in how new nurses process what is in front of them, according to Donna Berizzi, DNP, RN, associate chief nursing officer of the oncology service line at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore. The technical pieces, she said, are the easy part to teach. What is harder to teach is synthesizing a patient’s physical, psychosocial and technical needs into a single picture in real time.

“What we can’t teach is how to look at a patient situation and determine all of the things that are going to need to be tied up in a bow all at the same time for them to care for those patients,” Dr. Berizzi said.

The stakes of that gap are high in oncology, where patients can look fine until they suddenly are not, she said. Blood counts can plummet without visible warning signs, and a new nurse may not recognize the pattern quickly enough to escalate in time.

“For a new nurse to be able to understand what that process looks like and being able to escalate in the most complex environment can be incredibly challenging,” she said. 

The second gap surfaces in everyday communication between nurses and patients or other members of the healthcare team. When a new nurse calls a physician or an on-call provider to report a concern, Dr. Berizzi said, they often lead with an isolated data point instead of the full clinical picture. 

Dr. Muller sees the same erosion from a different angle. Nurses are not just losing comfort with escalation, she said, but the basic skill of connecting with patients and families, in part because of how tethered everyone has become to devices.

“It’s like a lost language,” she said, noting that during her own education, nursing schools had specific modules on team communication. 

The third gap is the most literal: hands-on repetition. Dr. Muller said she came through nursing school with more clinical hours than today’s graduates typically get, and could handle most of the clinical assessments her first job required. Today, she said, some new hires have performed a given bedside procedure only once or twice before their first day.

“Nurses are coming out of school with less skills,” she said.

What’s more, the shrinking pool of experienced nurses is straining the system meant to close these gaps. Dr. Berizzi said preceptor pairings do not always work on the first try, and finding a good match takes trial and error. The preceptors who do work well with new hires are asked to carry that load again and again, on top of their own patient assignments.

“A preceptor’s work is doubled when you have them working with a new nurse, and their level of responsibility is doubled,” she said. Demand has outpaced the supply of nurses willing and able to teach. “It’s not fair, it’s not possible,” Dr. Berizzi said.

Health systems are not waiting for nursing schools to close the gap on their own. Presbyterian Healthcare Services opened its Healthcare Advanced Learning Lab, an advanced simulation center, about two years ago and has since made it mandatory for every new nurse. Nurses spend their first week there, working through validated competencies with clinical educators, before ever taking a patient assignment. The system has also built its own framework, called Compassionate Connected Care, to teach caregivers how to interact with patients and their families.

At Johns Hopkins, Dr. Berizzi has moved oncology onboarding away from a fixed timeline entirely. New nurses meet weekly with their preceptor, manager, clinical nurse specialists and educators throughout orientation, and progress through clinical milestones rather than a preset number of weeks before taking on higher-acuity assignments such as chemotherapy administration. Even after formal orientation ends, the transition continues gradually.

“They don’t get a full assignment for weeks,” Dr. Berizzi said.

That oversight extends into daily habits. Dr. Berizzi said her team reviews new nurses’ documentation and checks in with them at the end of every shift. 

“We’re reading their notes, we’re meeting with them at the end of the day. How was your day? Tell me a little bit about how you tackle this situation,” Dr. Berizzi said, describing how she makes sure new nurses are seeking out education on their own between shifts. 

“A lot of this is like being back in school. They’ve got to go home, they need to read, they need to have access to education,” she said.

For now, Presbyterian and Johns Hopkins — like many other systems — are absorbing this work themselves, one preceptor, one shift and one new nurse at a time. 

The post 3 skills new nurses are missing on day 1, per nurse execs appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Two Chicago-area safety-net hospitals have closed within a year of each other — both owned by Princeton, N.J.-based Resilience Healthcare — and no health system, buyer or partner has publicly committed to reopening either.

Chicago-based Weiss Memorial Hospital, a 239-bed acute care facility, closed Aug. 8, 2025, as CMS moved to terminate its Medicare participation over noncompliance with federal standards for emergency services, nursing services and the physician environment. About 55% of Weiss patients were covered by Medicare and roughly 30% by Medicaid, a payer mix that left too few commercially insured patients to sustain the hospital once Medicare reimbursement ended.

Oak Park, Ill.-based West Suburban Medical Center, Weiss’ sister hospital, closed June 11, after its last working elevator broke down. The hospital on June 30 notified staff of a “mass layoff” effective Aug. 31 that it said is “expected to be permanent,” according to an employee letter obtained by Becker’s. 

The closures capped a financial unraveling at Resilience, which acquired the two Chicago hospitals from El Segundo, Calif.-based Pipeline Health System in January 2023. 

However, Chicago has absorbed this kind of loss before. 

Twenty hospitals in the city closed between 2000 and 2022, nearly 25% of its total, according to Chicago Policy Review. Last year, Ascension St. Elizabeth closed before Ontario, Calif.-based Prime Healthcare acquired it and eight other Illinois hospitals, and Louisville, Ky.-based Kindred closed two Chicago area long-term acute care hospitals.

Atlanta offers a different trajectory.

Atrium Health on June 18 filed a letter of determination to build its first hospital in metro Atlanta, partnering with Morehouse School of Medicine on a short-stay acute care teaching hospital in Fulton County, Ga. The facility would open with 50 beds as the anchor of a 40-acre mixed-use campus.

In public statements, Atrium Health framed the project as a response to closures. The proposed hospital is intended to address care gaps left by two WellStar Health System shutdowns: WellStar AMC South in May 2022 and WellStar Atlanta Medical Center in November 2022. Under the filing, the new hospital cannot exceed 50% of the 762 short-stay beds Atlanta Medical Center held at closure, capping it near 381 beds.

Atlanta-based Grady Health System absorbed the largest influx of patients following the closures and expanded capacity by 180 beds with $130 million in state and federal funding. It also opened neighborhood and specialty clinics. Even so, local leaders have said Atlanta still needs additional hospital capacity to replace the 198-bed AMC South campus and the 460-bed Atlanta Medical Center.

Atrium Health has the scale to make that investment. It is part of Charlotte, N.C.-based Advocate Health, which operates 69 hospitals across six states, and already has a Georgia footprint through Atrium Health Navicent and Atrium Health Floyd.

That scale is also at the heart of Chicago’s challenge.

Rebuilding safety-net capacity in a major urban market requires a well-capitalized operator willing to absorb a Medicare- and Medicaid-heavy payer mix — the same economics that contributed to Weiss’ collapse. No comparable system has signaled interest in Weiss, on Chicago’s North Side, or West Suburban, on the city’s West Side.

However, one major investment is underway elsewhere in the city. Advocate Health Care — also part of Advocate Health — broke ground on a $300 million hospital earlier this month. The 52-bed hospital will replace the current Advocate Trinity Hospital and serve as the centerpiece for the health system’s $1 billion investment in Chicago’s South Side.

For now, pressure to reopen West Suburban is coming from its landlord rather than another health system. Rathnaker Patlola, who owns the hospital’s real estate through Ramco Healthcare Holdings, said the layoff notice violates “the spirit and the letter” of his agreement with Resilience and vowed to take action to ensure the hospital reopens. Manoj Prasad, MD, PhD, Resilience’s CEO, issued the layoff notice. 

Becker’s has reached out to West Suburban for comment.

State officials, meanwhile, have underscored the limits of their authority. The Illinois Department of Public Health said the situation was created by a private company, that it received no advance notice of the service suspensions or layoffs, and that it lacks authority over employment decisions, even as it remains “deeply concerned about workforce stability in community hospitals.”

The strategic takeaway for hospital leaders watching from other markets: closures are increasingly clustering at financially fragile safety-net hospitals, and restoring access depends less on regulators than on whether a well-capitalized health system is willing to step in.

Atlanta has a plan to help restore lost capacity. Chicago is still waiting for one.

The post When 2 hospitals close: Atlanta’s answer vs. Chicago’s void appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Young adults are far less likely than older generations to maintain an ongoing relationship with a primary care physician, a new survey shows.

The poll was commissioned by Columbus-based OSU Wexner Medical Center and conducted by the survey and market research firm SSRS. The survey includes responses from 1,006 U.S. adults between May 1 and May 3.

Three survey findings:

1. Seventy-one percent of adults ages 18-29 reported having a primary care physician, compared with 97% of adults 65 and older.
2. Among young adults who do have a primary care physician, just 47% had a checkup in the last year.
3. When a nonemergency issue arises, 36% of young adults go to urgent care first, compared with 68% of older adults who contact their primary care physician first.

OSU Wexner noted that primary care is tied to better outcomes, fewer hospital stays and lower emergency department utilization. The findings point to a widening generational divide in care-seeking behavior that health systems will need to address as Gen Z ages into a larger share of the patient population.

The post The Gen Z, boomer primary care gap: 3 findings appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

While 2026 kicked off with fewer hospital closures compared to the same period in 2025, three hospitals in three states are on the verge of closing, and their situations mirror what many facilities across the country are facing.

In Chicago, Roseland Community Hospital has negative 65 days cash on hand, meaning incoming dollars are spoken for before arrival. 

Roseland Community made its June 30 payroll because a Medicaid managed care organization made a large volume of claims payments in time to cover it. A $16 million state grant in Illinois’ fiscal year 2027 budget also offers potential relief, but only if the application moves fast.

“When we say that, here’s this grant money that’s there. This stabilizes us,” Tim Egan, president and CEO of Roseland Community Hospital, told Becker’s. “This will help keep the doors open. As I told [Sameer Vohra, MD, director of the Illinois Department of Public Health], who was very compassionate and understands our situation, we’re on our hands and knees begging.”

Roseland Community is also rolling out an austerity plan July 1: a 10% pay cut for senior executives and furloughs for around 30 of the hospital’s roughly 550 employees. Further service line and department cuts are also not being ruled out. 

In Montgomery, Ala., Jackson Hospital planned to close by July 1, but pushed the date back as it continues talks with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama, along with city, county and state leaders on a path forward.

Jackson Hospital, which sought bankruptcy protection in February, has been in reimbursement disputes with BCBS Alabama for months.

While the hospital remains operational, CEO John Quinlivan told Becker’s that “important pieces” must be finalized to ensure it remains open. 

“I can’t tell you which way it’s going to go, but we are hopeful,” Mr. Quinlivan told Becker’s June 25. “Both organizations want to keep this hospital open. We especially want to keep the hospital open, but we’ve got to have a financial model that makes that possible.” 

In Mississippi, financially challenged Greenwood Leflore Hospital saw a small win June 29, after a state Chancery Court judge ordered the state’s Division of Medicaid to release a roughly $2.4 million payment to the hospital. 

The payment, expected June 30, aims to keep the hospital open through July 31, when it can be transitioned to a larger system. 

On June 18, the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees voted for Jackson-based University of Mississippi Medical Center to take over Greenwood Leflore. The hospital’s property would be donated to UMMC under the approval. 

Greenwood Leflore already laid off 86 employees and cut services in April and pushed its closure date back from June 15 to July 31 after a county judge in mid-March temporarily blocked the state Division of Medicaid from collecting a $5.5 million debt from the hospital. 

While none of these hospitals have actually closed, each is running on thin ice with outcomes being determined in the days and weeks ahead. 

The post How 3 hospitals on the brink of closure are fighting to stay open  appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

When the COVID-19 pandemic receded, clinical workers expected three things: sustained recognition for what they had endured, a period of respite and a return to some version of normalcy. Most got none of them.

Instead, they returned to waiting rooms full of patients who had deferred care for years and walked into a new kind of burnout.

“There were a lot of patients waiting to come to the healthcare system,” said David Marcozzi, MD, chief clinical officer of Baltimore-based University of Maryland Medical Center and associate dean of clinical affairs at University of Maryland School of Medicine. “You really weren’t the hero that the public had originally thought you were — and I still consider everyone who came to work a hero. You couldn’t really step away. There was more work to do.”

Years later, the burnout has not disappeared. New AI capabilities have chipped away at documentation burden, but workforce burnout has changed shape, and that shift has made it harder to address.

Five leaders — a chief clinical officer, a chief nurse executive, a chief quality officer and two well-being leaders — described to Becker’s a clinical workforce navigating a new kind of strain: one without a common enemy or a clear end.

From a single cause to many

The defining feature of COVID-19 pandemic-era burnout, several executives said, was that it had a focus. Workers knew what they were battling, and they believed there would be an end.

“In COVID, there was a common cause to save people’s lives, and it was really easy to have that motivation,” said Mary Beth Lardizabal, DO, vice president of mental health and addiction and system medical director of provider well-being at Minneapolis-based Allina Health. “Plus, we had the belief that there would be a cure, there would be an end. Burnout is not like that now.”

What clinicians face today is harder to name. Financial pressure, staffing constraints, regulatory burden, patient volume and institutional uncertainty are all compounding at once.

“There’s stressors coming from so many different angles versus just one,” said Heidi Woodland-Leine, PsyD, manager of provider well-being at Allina Health.

That pressure has specific clinical and legal consequences. When financial constraints force institutions to cut services or change how care is delivered, clinicians experience what Dr. Lardizabal called moral distress — a term she was deliberate about.

“In the COVID pandemic everybody was kind of using all resources available, and now there are less and less resources,” she said. “Clinicians are being asked to do things differently in a way that might not be how they were trained or what they would think is the best possible care, simply because those resources or finances are not available… Some people call it moral injury, but I think the term moral distress captures it.”

Dr. Marcozzi framed the same pressure from a systems perspective. As healthcare expenditures approach 18% to 19% of the nation’s gross domestic product, the burden falls on clinicians: Do more with less.

“The inflection point that healthcare is considering right now is how to work smarter, not harder, with less,” he said.

Burnout looks different by discipline

Documentation burden — which research has consistently linked to physician burnout, including the after-hours charting known as pajama time — has started to ease as ambient AI tools and EHR improvements take hold. But experts caution against seeing AI technology as a general solution.

For nurses, the burnout equation looks different, according to James Ballinghoff, DNP, RN, chief nurse executive at Philadelphia-based Penn Medicine.

“For nursing, I think burnout is more around interactions with people: the disrespect, the violence, the aggression,” Dr. Ballinghoff said. “We spend the majority of time with the patient.”

Staffing is the other major factor, which Dr. Ballinghoff said is not simply nurse-to-patient ratios. When environmental services, food service, phlebotomy or nursing assistant teams run short, registered nurses absorb those gaps.

“Staffing does not necessarily mean RN staffing,” he said, recalling a time when environmental service workers were in short supply, “so there were no linens, [nurses] had to run and get this supply, they had to help turn over a room.” 

These additional expectations can weigh on staff. 

“The lemon has been squeezed so tight, meaning reimbursements are either flat, sometimes going down, very rarely is it going up, but our expenses went up, our labor costs went up, our supply costs went up, everything went up,” Dr. Ballinghoff said. “It’s just like how we’re living at home, our paychecks can go up, but the price of eggs and gas are going up, and you can’t always rely on your employer to fix that for you. 

“We can’t rely on the government paying us the Medicare rates or the payers paying us to cover those increases,” he said. “So, where does it get cut? It gets cut in employees, you know, it always does. And people are feeling that.”

Dr. Ballinghoff also pointed to a subtler structural shift: the design of new hospital buildings. Where nurses once gathered at a central station to document, decompress and build relationships, newer facilities place workstations outside individual rooms, closer to patients, but farther from colleagues.

“Because there’s no longer that nurses station where people would gather and have conversations and create relationships,” he said. “That’s a negative to what you were trying to accomplish as a positive.”

The pizza problem

Organizations trying to address burnout through recognition gestures — catered lunches, T-shirts, Nurses Week giveaways — have found those efforts increasingly counterproductive, executives said, at least in part because of social media.

Dr. Ballinghoff, who monitors nursing influencers with millions of followers to gauge workforce sentiment, described watching content that reframes sincere gestures as insults or shames someone for their profession. At one event, an audience booed a nurse manager after hearing her job title. 

“That is the worst message that you can be sending to people: that their managers are out to get them or they’re not supportive,” he said. “When millions of people are hearing that… you can’t underestimate or put your head in the sand that it’s not having an impact in a negative way on our profession.”

The effect is a chilling one: leaders now second-guess gestures they would once have made instinctively.

Dr. Lardizabal was direct about the limits of surface-level interventions: “If that’s your only intervention, you don’t have a well-being program. It has to be much more multifactorial.”

The well-being initiatives most likely to read as empty gestures, she said, are those that cannot be separated from the circumstances that produced them — an organization cutting services, reducing staff or asking clinicians to do more, then offering cold pizza as acknowledgment.

What’s actually working

The institutions seeing the most traction on provider well-being share a few traits: peer infrastructure, compensation for doing well-being work and consistent outcome measurement.

At Allina Health, the center for provider well-being runs refuel groups, direct care psychology and psychiatry services, employee assistance program counseling and a network of well-being leads embedded across the system. Those leads are compensated two hours per week for their well-being work.

“It shows the system that it’s valued,” Dr. Lardizabal said. “[With] the cost of replacing one of those docs, it’s money well spent.”

At NYC Health + Hospitals, Chief Quality Officer and Senior Vice President Hillary Jalon cited the system’s culture of safety infrastructure as the foundation for everything else — including a program called Helping Healers Heal and the reinvigoration of the Just Culture framework in 2024. 

The New York City-based system’s most recent employee engagement survey found safety culture scores rising 9% in acute care hospitals and 10% in post-acute care facilities during a period when national scores declined.

“In order for performance improvement to thrive, you need to have a culture of safety,” Ms. Jalon said.

What’s at stake

The stakes of getting this wrong extend well beyond retention figures. A significant share of the clinical workforce is nearing retirement, while the incoming pipeline of physicians and advanced practice providers is smaller and carries different expectations about work and sacrifice.

“Gen Z docs don’t want to do it the way their dads or moms did,” Dr. Lardizabal said. “They really want to have a life, and they’re not going to do the same sacrifice of their health and their time. If you want to recruit those folks, we have to have a different system.”

Dr. Ballinghoff put it plainly: “The joy in work is not there. It’s there in pockets, but it’s not there” the way it was for earlier generations.

Dr. Marcozzi, who was the COVID-19 Incident Commander for the University of Maryland Medical System, framed the moment in terms of what the industry learned from COVID-19 and risks losing.

“We came together and figured it out, and let’s not let those lessons learned fade away,” he said. “We need to accelerate the pace of change and speed of decision, so healthcare can keep up and be ready for the next response.”

The post Healthcare burnout looks different now — 5 leaders explain what’s driving it appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Rawlins, Wyo.-based Memorial Hospital of Carbon County, has grown its days cash on hand from 3 days to 25 days between January 2025 and June 2026, marking a significant financial recovery for the 25-bed critical access hospital.

The turnaround also includes a reduction in outstanding payables from more than $9 million to under $3 million, according to a June 24 news release from the hospital. Memorial’s leadership also established a dedicated reserve fund to protect payroll during periods of financial stress.

“These improvements didn’t happen overnight,” CEO Kerry Ashment said in the release. “They are the result of thoughtful planning, accountability, and a shared commitment to securing the hospital’s future.”

Revenue cycle improvements were a key part of the hospital’s financial recovery. Memorial brought medical coding in-house, partnered with a new revenue cycle management firm, streamlined payer enrollment and strengthened payer relationships. These efforts have helped better position the hospital to capture revenue appropriately while reducing administrative delays and inefficiencies. 

The hospital also conducted a compensation analysis in early 2026 and adjusted wages for several positions to improve recruitment and retention competitiveness.

Leadership has adopted a three-year strategic plan that outlines priorities for financial sustainability, service delivery and community engagement. Memorial has also adopted Lean business principles across departments, with managers receiving ongoing education and support to identify waste, improve processes and enhance overall performance.

Hospital leaders said that while meaningful progress has been made, the work is ongoing and Memorial will continue to focus on financial stewardship, operational efficiency and workforce development. 

The post How a critical access hospital raised its cash on hand from 3 to 25 days appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Health system chief marketing officers say marketing is most effective when it helps shape strategy instead of simply promoting it.

As executives face growing pressure to demonstrate measurable business results, Becker’s asked marketing leaders to share a campaign or initiative that moved the needle on revenue and what it revealed about marketing’s role in driving organizational growth.

At UW Medicine in Seattle, the proof of concept came from an access problem. Patients seeking evaluation for complex neurological conditions, including brain aneurysms, moyamoya disease, meningiomas, cavernomas and arteriovenous malformations, often faced friction that had nothing to do with clinical capacity. Getting to a neurosurgical consultation meant navigating traditional referral processes or waiting in call center queues.

A neuroscience marketing manager developed a digital self-referral pathway: condition-specific online appointment forms that allowed patients to request a neurosurgical consultation at any time and have submissions routed directly to the scheduling team. Within the first year, one pathway generated 44 completed neurosurgical consultations and 18 completed neurosurgeries, a 41% surgical conversion rate from completed appointments.

“Marketing is most effective when viewed not simply as a communications function, but as a strategic growth partner that helps remove barriers to care, improve the patient experience and create measurable pathways from awareness to treatment,” said Glenn Bieler, chief brand and marketing officer at UW Medicine, along with senior marketing manager Jamie Kahn and assistant director of marketing Jenny Ring-Perez. “When marketing is empowered to solve access challenges and collaborate closely with clinical and operational teams, it can deliver meaningful outcomes for patients, clinicians and the organization alike.”

At Coral Gables, Fla.-based Baptist Health South Florida, marketing’s role in growing the health system’s urgent care service line began well before anyone wrote a creative brief. Baptist Health has operated urgent care sites in South Florida for nearly 30 years, but a more competitive same-day care market demanded a rethinking of the service itself.

Christine Kotler, chief marketing and communications officer, said the marketing team entered the process at the strategy level, defining the business challenge, convening cross-functional stakeholders and leading consumer research before any campaign work began. Ethnographic research revealed that convenience and speed had become table stakes. What actually drove choice and loyalty was the total experience: the physical environment, the emotional tone and the ease of access.

One of the most consequential findings was that patients did not separate the quality of care from the quality of the environment. They expected urgent care spaces to feel modern, clean and welcoming, closer to hospitality than a traditional clinical setting.

Marketing translated those insights into facility redesigns, upgraded materials, more intuitive layouts and staff training before developing a single piece of advertising. The campaign that followed, “The Better Way to Better,” used a “green carpet” as a signature creative device to signal an elevated, differentiated experience, positioning Baptist Health above transactional retail care options on trust, warmth and quality rather than speed alone. Same-day care volumes have increased 8.21% year over year, with off-campus emergency department volumes growing 39.37%.

“When positioned upstream and empowered to influence the business before campaign development begins, marketing can help define not only how a service is communicated, but how it is experienced, differentiated and grown,” Ms. Kotler said. “Our brand is not defined by the advertising, but rather by the complete experience.”

At Mountain View, Calif.-based El Camino Health, Mark Klein, chief communications and marketing officer, described a deliberate move away from a communications-and-campaign model toward what he calls an enterprise growth capability that integrates brand strategy, precision marketing, consumer data and measurable patient acquisition.

Over a six-month period, the team deployed targeted growth campaigns across nine strategic service lines, including primary care and urgent care, generating more than 7,000 new patients and more than 70,000 verified visits. The campaigns produced more than $16 in attributable revenue for every dollar invested. Over the same period, unaided brand awareness increased by nearly 60%.

“The most important shift is moving from ‘marketing as expense’ to ‘marketing as a disciplined investment in growth,’” Mr. Klein said. “That reframing changes how we resource the function, how we measure success and how leadership engages with marketing as a strategic partner rather than a support function.”

At Marlton, N.J.-based Virtua Health, Chief Marketing Officer Chrisie Scott said the team built a shared ROI framework with finance that it regularly presents to leadership and the board. The work spans CRM-powered campaigns that bring patients back for critical screenings, including mammograms and colonoscopies, to propensity models that connect patients to specialized care.

Ms. Scott singled out a less data-driven initiative as one of the most instructive: a series of live virtual “real talk” women’s health chats in which physicians discuss topics from mental health to sexual wellness without a script. The format has consistently attracted both new patients and more engaged existing ones.

“It’s a powerful reminder of the impact marketing has when we allow our consumers’ voice to guide our approach,” Ms. Scott said. “In healthcare, where every operational dollar is vital, marketing must be able to connect what we do to quantifiable brand, business and human outcomes.”

The post How marketing is becoming a health system growth engine appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

From restructuring leadership teams to limiting hiring and adjusting compensation, health system leaders are making difficult workforce decisions that require balancing organizational priorities, financial realities and employee needs. 

While the circumstances vary, those decisions often require balancing several competing priorities at once. Becker’s asked three health system leaders: What is the hardest workforce decision you’ve made in the past year, and what did it teach you?

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

Amy Beales. Chief Human Resources Officer for Luminis Health (Annapolis, Md.): The hardest workforce decisions are often the ones that ask people to let go of what has always been in order to build what comes next. During periods of organizational transformation here at Luminis Health, we are trying to standardize practices, redesign leadership structures and create one culture for many. Those decisions aren’t always easy, but they reinforce that successful change depends less on the decision itself and more on how leaders communicate, listen, and bring people along as we strive to be a truly great workplace.

Wendy Fournet, EdD. Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer for Erlanger (Chattanooga, Tenn.): One of the hardest workforce decisions I made in the past year was implementing a more disciplined workforce management process (i.e. a labor council) during a period of significant financial and operational pressure. As part of that effort, we required executive-level review and approval for new positions and backfills across the organization, while balancing the needs of an academic health system with 8,000 employees and the reality of workforce shortages in healthcare.

The challenge was that every leader could make a compelling case for why their position was critical. Patient care, employee well-being, physician support and financial stewardship were all competing priorities. There were times when we had to delay or reconsider positions that departments genuinely needed, even though we understood the operational impact.

What made the decision difficult was recognizing that workforce decisions are not simply about headcount — they are about people, workload, patient access and organizational sustainability. Saying “not now” to a position often meant asking leaders and teams to continue carrying additional responsibilities in the short term.

The experience taught me three important lessons:

1. Transparency matters. Leaders are much more likely to support difficult workforce decisions when they understand the criteria, the data and the broader organizational context behind them.
2. Workforce planning must be strategic, not reactive. Every position should be evaluated based on its contribution to patient care, growth, operational efficiency and long-term organizational goals rather than historical staffing models.
3. People and finances are not competing priorities. Sustainable financial stewardship ultimately protects jobs, allows us to invest in our workforce and ensures we can continue fulfilling our mission for years to come.

While those conversations were difficult, the process strengthened our leadership team’s ability to think strategically about talent and resources. It reinforced that some of the most important workforce decisions are not about adding positions, but about ensuring we are building an organization that can continue to support our employees, physicians and patients well into the future.

Stacey Hancock. Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer at Archbold (Thomasville, Ga.): The hardest workforce decision I’ve made in the past year was implementing market-based pay adjustments across our system while ensuring internal equity and long-term financial sustainability.

Like many health systems, we were facing significant external pressure on wages — particularly in nursing and other high-demand roles. The data clearly showed we needed to act to remain competitive and retain talent. However, making targeted adjustments introduced real challenges around compression, equity between tenured and newly hired team members, and the broader impact on our overall compensation structure.

The difficult part of this decision wasn’t recognizing the need — it was determining how to do it responsibly. We had to make thoughtful choices about where to prioritize investments, how to communicate transparently with leaders and team members and how to manage expectations when we couldn’t address every concern at once.

What this taught me is that workforce decisions at this level require both discipline and empathy. You have to be grounded in data and strategy, but equally committed to fairness, consistency and clear communication. It also reinforced that there is rarely a perfect solution — only the most responsible one given your mission, your resources and your people.

Ultimately, it strengthened our approach to compensation governance and reinforced the importance of taking a long-term, systemwide view rather than reacting to short-term pressures.

Joline Treanor. System Chief Human Resources Officer at City of Hope (Duarte, Calif.): One of the most complex workforce challenges this past year was helping lead through a period of significant organizational change while balancing the needs of our people, patients and long-term strategic priorities. For a CHRO, moments like these reinforce the importance of clear communication, transparency and consistency, especially when teams are navigating uncertainty.

Most importantly, they are a reminder that every workforce decision affects real people and families. As leaders, we have a responsibility to approach these moments with thoughtfulness and intention, helping individuals navigate what is ahead while keeping teams moving forward with clarity and confidence, guided our values of inclusion, integrity and compassion. 

The post Hiring, pay and restructuring: 4 HR leaders on difficult workforce decisions  appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Many of the 519 hospitals that drew federal price transparency warning letters from the Trump administration said the citations stemmed from minor technical or formatting errors in their data files — not a failure to disclose pricing — and that the problems were corrected within days of notification.

The Associated Press exclusively received a list of hospitals that have either received warning letters or requests to submit plans to provide transparency pricing since April. A senior administration official who requested anonymity told the news outlet that President Donald Trump plans to ramp up price transparency enforcement and more hospitals are likely to receive letters for failure to comply.

Becker’s spoke with more than a dozen health systems with hospitals that were among the 519 that received notice letters. The systems said their issues were tied to technical or formatting issues rather than missing pricing data.

Among them was Pittsburgh-based Allegheny Health Network, whose flagship academic medical center, Allegheny General Hospital, received a warning notice from CMS. An Allegheny Health Network spokesperson told Becker’s the hospital received the notice in April and the issue raised by the administration was “rectified immediately.”

“Importantly, the only issue raised by CMS was not a transparency issue, it was a small technical/clerical issue,” the spokesperson said. “We submitted a file that included our DBA name (Allegheny General Hospital) but did not include our legal entity name (West Penn Allegheny Health System).”

Allegheny Health Network received written confirmation in May that CMS was satisfied with the fix and the issue is now closed. 

Greenville, N.C.-based ECU Health received warning notices at two of its hospitals, its flagship ECU Health Medical Center and ECU Health Beaufort Hospital in Washington, N.C. 

An ECU Health spokesperson said that for its flagship hospital, CMS identified technical issues with the machine-readable file that affected compliance with certain formatting requirements, and the identified technical issues were corrected within the timeframe allowed by CMS.

The notice received by ECU Health Beaufort Hospital involved a separate issue related to its organizational structure. The hospital is a campus of ECU Health Medical Center. Pricing information was already publicly available as part of the flagship hospital’s file. 

“We have since taken additional steps to post a separate machine-readable file for the Beaufort campus to further facilitate patient access to pricing information specific to that location,” the ECU Health spokesperson said. 

Jeremy Farnum, director of information services at Lompoc (Calif) Valley Medical Center said CMS identified three encoding errors in the hospital’s machine-readable file. He said the issues did not involve missing pricing data or an unwillingness to disclose charges. There were formation issues in how the data was structured within the MRF.

“Upon receiving the notice, we worked with our MRF hosting vendor to identify and correct all three errors,” Mr. Farnum said. “We also prepared a corrective action plan to formalize the fixes and prevent recurrence. We support the goals of price transparency and have been committed to compliance since the rule took effect. The increased enforcement focus reinforces the importance of the technical precision required in MRF files, and we’ve tightened our internal review processes accordingly.”

New price transparency rules took effect for hospitals April 1 covering machine-readable files, with changes focused on attestation language and executive accountability for file accuracy, percentile allowed amount reporting, and National Provider Identifier reporting. Multiple health systems noted the new rules in their responses to Becker’s, including King of Prussia, Pa.-based Universal Health System, which had several facilities receive notices from CMS following the updated requirements. 

“The primary issue that has been raised was a technical one dealing with the manner in which our facilities were identified and not one related to the disclosure of pricing information,” a UHS spokesperson said. “All pricing information was provided. Upon notification, we reviewed the matter and facilities have implemented the necessary corrections. Most facilities have since received notice of resolution from CMS.” 

Federal price transparency laws have been in effect for hospitals since Jan. 1, 2021, and July 1, 2022, for payers. CMS has fined 28 hospitals for alleged price transparency violations since the law took effect in 2021. Ten hospitals were fined in 2025, and one hospital has been fined so far in 2026.

The post Hospitals cite technical issues for price transparency notices  appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

A wave of new research is expanding what clinicians and health system leaders know about GLP-1 medications — covering new territory from liver disease to male fertility to a blood pressure safety signal. 

Here are eight recent findings:

1. GLP-1 medications did not harm male hormones or fertility after long-term use and may improve testosterone and sperm quality in men with obesity-related low testosterone. Researchers said the findings support treating underlying obesity as a driver of low testosterone rather than defaulting to testosterone replacement therapy.
2. Researchers at Chicago-based Northwestern Medicine identified a hypotension safety signal in GLP-1 users already taking multiple blood pressure medications, according to a June 13 system news release. In an analysis of more than 42,000 adults, hypotensive events — including dizziness, fainting and falls — rose from 8.7% to 10.2% within six months of starting GLP-1 therapy, with risk remaining elevated at 12 months. Adults 65 and older accounted for 53% of events despite representing 37% of the study population. Researchers said weight loss alone did not explain the increased risk and urged clinicians to monitor high-risk patients, particularly those obtaining GLP-1s without physician oversight.
3. Middle-age adults using GLP-1s for obesity could save an average of $192,735 in lifetime medical costs. Adults starting treatment between ages 25 and 30 could save as much as $270,800. 
4. Drugmakers including Pfizer, Roche, Boehringer Ingelheim and Amgen are developing next-generation GLP-1 therapies targeting injection frequency, gastrointestinal side effects and muscle mass loss. Boehringer Ingelheim reported Phase 3 data showing its GLP-1 and glucagon combination reduced lean-mass loss to 10.8% of total weight lost — versus 25% to 40% with current therapies — while delivering 16.6% average total body weight loss over 72 weeks. Pfizer is testing a monthly formulation that could cut injections from 52 per year to as few as 13.
5. Eli Lilly’s oral GLP-1 Foundayo (orforglipron) outperformed oral semaglutide on blood sugar control and weight loss in the first head-to-head Phase 3 trial of two oral GLP-1 therapies. At 52 weeks, patients on Foundayo 17.2 milligrams lost 19.7 pounds on average, versus 11 pounds for oral semaglutide. 
6. An experimental dual agonist, survodutide, produced significant liver fat reduction and weight loss in a Phase 3 trial of adults with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease, according to a study conducted by researchers in the U.S., Candada and Europe and published June 7 in Nature Medicine. Among patients given survodutide over 48 weeks, 84% reduced liver fat by at least 30% versus 24% on placebo, and 61% reached normal liver fat levels versus 5.7% on placebo. Patients also lost an average of 12% of body weight versus 1% on placebo. The drug has received FDA Breakthrough Therapy Designation.
7. GLP-1 use was linked to lower incidence and improved outcomes across multiple cancer types, including breast, colorectal, prostate, pancreatic, liver and non-small cell lung cancers. Among more than 841,000 breast cancer patients, GLP-1 use was associated with reduced all-cause mortality and lower recurrence risk in patients with obesity or Type 2 diabetes.
8. Oral Wegovy surpassed 3 million prescriptions in just over five months following its Jan. 5 U.S. launch — roughly one script every five seconds. The milestone comes as the oral GLP-1 market intensifies, with Lilly’s June head-to-head data directly contesting Novo’s earlier claims that oral semaglutide outperforms orforglipron on weight loss and GI tolerability.

The post 8 GLP-1 findings to know appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Workforce spending remained hospitals’ top expense in 2025, representing 60% of total expenses, according to the American Hospital Association. 

Workforce costs rose 5.6% in 2025 as hospitals continued increasing wages and investing in recruitment and retention efforts for nurses, physicians and other staff, according to the AHA’s 2026 “Cost of Caring” report.

First-quarter financial reports show those workforce investments continued into 2026, with labor costs rising across most health systems. Here is how 25 health systems’ labor costs changed year over year during the three months ended March 31:

Adventist Health (Roseville, Calif.) 
Employee compensation: $879 million (+1.3% YOY)

Advocate Health (Charlotte, N.C.)
Salaries, wages and benefits: $5.5 billion (+8.1% YOY)

Banner Health (Phoenix) 
Salaries, benefits and contract labor: $1.8 billion (+5.9% YOY)

BayCare Health System (Clearwater, Fla.)
Salaries and benefits: $708.5 million (+6.4% YOY) 

BJC Health System (St. Louis)
Salaries and benefits: $1.5 billion (+8.2% YOY)

Bon Secours Mercy Health (Cincinnati)
Employee compensation: $1.7 billion (+4.1% YOY) 

Cleveland Clinic
Salaries, wages and benefits: $2.5 billion (+5.1% YOY) 

Corewell Health (Southfield, Mich.) 
Salaries, wages and employee benefits: $1.6 billion (+3.6% YOY)

HCA Healthcare (Nashville, Tenn.) 
Salaries and benefits: $8.3 billion (+3.6% YOY) 

Indiana University Health (Indianapolis)
Salaries, wages and benefits: $1.3 billion (+3.6% YOY)

Inova Health System (Falls Church, Va.)
Salaries and benefits: $955.2 million (+6.6% YOY)

Intermountain Health (Salt Lake City)
Employee compensation and benefits: $2 billion (+5.1% YOY)

Kaiser Permanente (Oakland, Calif.)
Salaries, wages and benefits: $7.4 billion (+3% YOY)

Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Minn.)
Salaries and benefits: $2.8 billion (+5.8% YOY)

Montefiore Health System (New York City)
Salaries, wages and employee benefits: $1 billion (+1.5% YOY)

Mount Sinai Health System (New York City)
Salaries, wages and benefits: $1.5 billion (-3.3% YOY)

Novant Health (Winston-Salem, N.C.)
Salaries and employee benefits: $1.5 billion (+12.9% YOY) 

Presbyterian Healthcare Services (Albuquerque, N.M.)
Salaries, wages and employee benefits: $454.2 million (+9.6% YOY)

Providence (Renton, Wash.)
Salaries and benefits: $4.1 billion (+6.6% YOY) 

Renown Health (Reno, Nev.) 
Salaries, wages and employee benefits: $226.7 million (+4.4% YOY) 

SSM Health (St. Louis)
Salaries and benefits: $3.3 billion (+12.8% YOY) 

Sutter Health (Sacramento, Calif.)
Salaries and employee benefits: $2.3 billion (+6.9% YOY) 

Texas Health Resources (Arlington)
Salaries, wages and employee benefits: $996.3 million (+12.8% YOY) 

University Hospitals (Cleveland)
Salaries, wages and employee benefits: $965.9 million (+5.5% YOY) 

UPMC (Pittsburgh)
Salaries, professional fees and employee benefits: $2.7 billion (+4.9% YOY)

The post How 25 health systems’ labor costs trended in Q1  appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Nationally, roughly 1% of U.S. physicians have opted out of Medicare entirely, according to 2025 data from KFF. 

While 1% appears to be a marginal number upon first glance, a closer look at where those exits are happening, and what is accelerating the trend, tells a more consequential story for independent physician practices and the ASCs that depend on them.

A 2025 JAMA analysis of Medicare claims data from 2013 to 2023 found that while overall physician participation in Medicare grew by 6.3% over that decade, physicians in nonmetropolitan counties were more likely to exit the program than their metropolitan counterparts. 

Physicians practicing in Health Professional Shortage Areas — communities already struggling to maintain adequate care capacity — were also disproportionately leaving. 

Notably, female physicians exited at a rate of 3.16%, compared with 2.39% for male physicians, a disparity the study’s author, Christopher Whaley, PhD, of Brown University in Providence, R.I., linked in part to the fact that female physicians are overrepresented in primary care, where Medicare reimbursement pressure has been most acute.

The financial logic driving those exits has been building for decades. According to the American Medical Association, Medicare reimbursement for physician services has declined 33% from 2001 to 2026 when adjusted for inflation, with some fee schedule provisions unchanged since 1992.

“Unfortunately, physicians are losing money in multiple scenarios in medicine,” Taif Mukhdomi, MD, interventional pain physician at Columbus, Ohio-based Pain Zero, told Becker’s in 2025. “The most prominent loss of physician revenue is Medicare’s consistent decreasing of physician reimbursement in office settings while supporting hospital-setting healthcare services. This trend affects all insurances, as Medicare is the benchmark of most if not all healthcare insurance reimbursement.”

The compounding effect of that benchmark problem is what makes individual opt-out decisions a systemic indicator rather than an isolated one. When Medicare cuts, commercial payers often follow — making the economic calculus for staying in the program worse with each rate cycle.

The opt-out rate and practice closure rate are distinct metrics, but they trace the same root cause. Becker’s reported 23 physician practice closures in 2025, with continued closures into 2026 — including the shuttering of four primary care clinics by Johnson City, Tenn.-based State of Franklin Healthcare Associates in January.

Whether a physician opts out of Medicare or closes a practice entirely, the downstream effect on patient access is similar, and the entity stepping into that gap increasingly is not another independent physician.

Payer-operated practices now account for 4.2% of the national Medicare primary care market by service volume, up from just 0.8% in 2016, according to a July 2025 study in Health Affairs Scholar. In counties with above-average Medicare Advantage enrollment, that share rises to 5.5%. Independent physicians exiting Medicare are increasingly being replaced by vertically integrated entities.

For ASCs, that consolidation dynamic carries real operational stakes. ASC volume is largely physician-driven: independent surgical specialists who control their own referral patterns are the partner base that sustains most physician-owned centers. As those physicians face escalating pressure — rate cuts, administrative burden, rising practice costs — the population of potential ASC partners is narrowing, and the alternatives available to them increasingly point away from the independent practice model entirely.

The 2026 Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System final rule moved Medicare further toward equalizing rates across sites of care, added 560 codes to the ASC covered procedures list and phased out 285 primarily musculoskeletal procedures from the inpatient-only list. CMS estimated the changes would reduce OPPS spending by roughly $290 million in 2026. For independent physician groups, site neutrality levels the playing field between their practice and larger, vertically integrated systems and hospitals, while also removing the reimbursement penalty for directing surgical cases to ASCs rather than HOPDs.

“If reimbursement suddenly shifted to site-neutral payments, private practices would immediately redirect as many appropriate cases as possible from hospitals to their own ASCs, since the financial disadvantage of performing cases outside the hospital would disappear overnight,” Brian Curtin, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at OrthoCarolina Hip and Knee Center in Charlotte, N.C., told Becker’s.

In terms of legislative reform, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in March introduced the Provider Reimbursement Stability Act, led by Rep. Greg Murphy, MD, a Republican from North carolina. The bill would raise the budget neutrality threshold from $20 million to $54.3 million, index it to inflation every five years, limit year-to-year conversion factor variance to 2.5% and require updates to practice expense calculations at least every five years. If enacted, the bill would represent the most structural fix to physician fee schedule mechanics since MACRA.

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My mom was a nurse. Some of my most vivid childhood memories are of accompanying her on house calls, where she taught husbands and wives how to give insulin injections using an orange for practice. Growing up in Bayonne, N.J., my mother was the trusted soul of our community and the person everyone turned to when they had a problem. Watching her care for others, I knew I wanted to dedicate my life caring for people, too.

Nearly four decades later, healthcare looks very different. At Hackensack Meridian Health, a virtual nurse can support a bedside team from a remote workstation. Generative AI can help draft our nursing notes. And care can now be delivered directly in patients’ homes. The tools have changed in ways my mother would hardly recognize, but the heart of the work has not. The trusted soul at the bedside is still the same job she did at our kitchen table in Bayonne.

How health leaders choose to integrate technology will determine whether the next generation of nurses can maintain the art of caring. Too much of the conversation around AI in healthcare is framed in terms of productivity and cost savings. That mindset will drive nurses away. If health systems use AI primarily to cut labor costs instead of enhancing humanity in care delivery, we will only accelerate the burnout crisis we are trying to solve.

The better approach is to see technology as a way to create more time for patient connection, not less. Every AI tool and new virtual platform is only worth deploying if it gives bedside nurses more capacity to build meaningful connections with patients.

At HMH, our philosophy is not built around maintaining the status quo. We are not comfortable with mediocrity, and we are not interested in simply getting by. We believe the only way to redefine health care and improve outcomes for our patients is to innovate aggressively. But our approach to innovation is deliberate; we are deploying technology precisely where administrative burdens pull our nurses away from their patients.

Virtual nursing is one of the strongest examples of that philosophy in practice. We launched the program two years ago, and today we have 147 integrated beds across four hospitals where remote team members tag-team with bedside nurses on admission, discharge, education and documentation. With the help of the virtual team, the bedside nurse can spend more meaningful time with patients.

We are also using Epic’s generative AI to assist with nursing documentation, and our Hospital from Home program has cared for more than 2,000 patients since January 2024. Together, these innovations have helped expand nursing capacity, while safeguarding the human connection that must be at the center of care.

Amid a national nursing shortage and a burnout crisis, HMH’s 2025 nurse vacancy rate is 4.5%, compared with the national average of 9.6%. This result only happens when you deploy technology to protect the time nurses spend connecting with and caring for patients.

The human connection and the complex, real-time decision-making that happens at the bedside cannot be replaced by technology. The art of caring — empathy, compassion and an unwavering commitment to improving the patient experience — is what truly reaches patients in their most vulnerable moments. It is what our 9,000 nurses bring to every shift and every patient interaction. And it is something no chatbot or virtual platform will ever replace.

I encourage health system leaders to ask a simple question when evaluating new technology: Will this give our nurses more time to be human with patients, or will it pull them away from the bedside? Investments that pass that test will strengthen our workforce, improve outcomes and build more resilient systems of care.

For nurse leaders and aspiring nurses entering the profession, the message is equally important. Embrace the change. The tools will keep evolving. But the art of caring is ours to protect.

I draw on my nursing foundation every single day. Although I am no longer at the bedside, I am alongside our nurses at one of our sites weekly, because nursing is in my DNA. My “why” began at a kitchen table in Bayonne and it has never left me.

What happens within the four walls of our hospitals is only a small part of a patient’s story. We are committed to caring for our patients for the rest of their lives. The tools may continue to evolve, but every patient still needs what my mother gave her neighbors: trust, compassion and a nurse who knows how to care.

The post As the nursing landscape evolves, the art of caring remains critical appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Cambridge, Mass.-based Harvard University was ranked the top university for radiology, nuclear medicine and medical imaging — both globally and in the U.S. — as part of U.S. News & World Report’s “2026-2027 Best Global Universities” rankings.

Harvard University also earned the top spot for overall best global university, according to a June 16 news release from U.S. News & World Report.

U.S. News ranked more than 2,250 universities overall and by 51 subject areas based on data collected by Clarivate from 2020 to 2024. Read more about the methodology here.

Here are the top 25 U.S. universities for radiology, nuclear medicine and medical imaging according to U.S. News, listed with subject score:

1. Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.): 100

2. Stanford (Calif.) University: 87

3. Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore): 83.9

4. University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia): 82.2

5. University of California San Francisco: 81

6. Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (New York City): 76.1

7. University of California Los Angeles: 76

8. University of Michigan Ann Arbor: 74.7

9. Cornell University (Ithaca, N.Y.): 73.7

10. University of Wisconsin Madison: 72.2

11. Yale University (New Haven, Conn.): 72

12. Duke University (Durham, N.C.): 71.3

13. New York University (New York City): 68.3

14. Emory University (Atlanta): 66.5

15. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, Mass.): 66.4

16. University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill): 66.2

17. Washington University in St. Louis: 65.5

18. University of Washington (Seattle): 65.1

19. University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (Dallas): 64.6

20 (tied). University of California San Diego: 63.4

20 (tied). University of Southern California (Los Angeles): 63.4

22. University of Pittsburgh: 61.9

23. University of Maryland Baltimore: 61.5

24. Vanderbilt University (Nashville): 59.1

25. Columbia University (New York City): 58.9

Read the full ranking here. 

The post Top universities for radiology, nuclear medicine: US News appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Valdosta, Ga.-based SGMC Health has appointed Sarah Durden, BSN, RN, as director of nursing for acute care.

In the role, Ms. Durden oversees nursing operations across 3 West, 4 South and virtual nursing program, according to a June 15 hospital news release.

Ms. Durden brings more than 16 years of nursing experience to the position. She began her healthcare career in the emergency department as a unit clerk and patient care technician before becoming a registered nurse and serving on a medical-surgical unit.

She has since served in clinical supervisory roles in extended recovery and as a nurse manager, according to the release.

The post Georgia health system names director of nursing appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Virtual nursing for hospital discharge was associated with sharply lower 30-day emergency department readmissions across nine hospitals in a major Southeastern U.S. health system, according to a study published in npj Digital Medicine.

Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill compared 4,662 discharges handled by remotely located virtual nurses with 4,662 traditional in-person discharges, matched on patient and hospital characteristics. Patients discharged through virtual nursing returned to the ED within 30 days at a rate of 3.7%, versus 13.3% for in-person discharge — a 72% relative reduction, or a risk ratio of 0.28. That works out to roughly 1 readmission in 27 virtual-nursing patients, compared with 1 in 8 receiving standard discharge.

The effect held in both settings, with the gap widest in rural hospitals: 3.1% versus 17.9% rural, and 4.1% versus 10.7% urban.

Virtual nurses delivered structured, uninterrupted discharge education — medication reconciliation, teach-back, and care-plan review — from an off-site center operating 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., seven days a week. The health system rolled out the model across the nine hospitals between 2022 and 2024.

The study was retrospective and observational, so it shows association rather than causation; the authors flagged possible residual confounding and a single-system scope, and called for randomized trials and cost-effectiveness research.

For hospital leaders weighing virtual nursing amid persistent staffing shortages, the findings offer some of the first multisite, patient-outcome evidence that the model can streamline discharge without compromising short-term safety.

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S&P Global Ratings’ preliminary 2025 medians show nonprofit hospitals and health systems posting positive but still-thin operating margins, stronger debt-service coverage and growing reserves, with performance varying across credit tiers. Hospitals enter the back half of 2026 managing elevated labor and drug costs, an eroding payer mix and the looming reimbursement changes of HR 1. 

Below are 100 hospital financial benchmarks from the most recent reports available from S&P Global Ratings, Moody’s Ratings, Kaufman Hall and KFF: 

S&P Global Ratings preliminary 2025 medians

Source: S&P Global Ratings, “Preliminary 2025 Medians For U.S. Not-For-Profit Acute Health Care Providers Indicate Incremental Improvement,” published May 7, 2026, based on 238 audits. Final medians on roughly 400 rated entities are due in the third quarter of 2026.

All acute care providers (standalone hospitals and systems combined)

1. Median operating margin: 1.2%
2. Excess margin: 4.3%
3. Operating EBIDA margin: 6.2%
4. EBIDA margin: 8.9%
5. Maximum annual debt service coverage: 4.4x
6. Operating lease-adjusted coverage: 3.8x
7. Unrestricted days’ cash on hand: 208.2
8. Unrestricted reserves to total long-term debt: 204.8%
9. Capital expenditures to depreciation: 133.6%
10. Long-term debt to capitalization: 26.3%
11. Median total operating revenue: $2.18 billion

Health systems

12. Median operating margin: 1.5%
13. Excess margin: 4.1%
14. Operating EBIDA margin: 6.0%
15. EBIDA margin: 8.2%
16. Maximum annual debt service coverage: 4.8x
17. Operating lease-adjusted coverage: 3.6x
18. Unrestricted days’ cash on hand: 207.6
19. Unrestricted reserves to total long-term debt: 207.7%
20. Capital expenditures to depreciation: 145.1%
21. Long-term debt to capitalization: 26.5%

Standalone hospitals

22. Median operating margin: 1.1%
23. Excess margin: 4.8%
24. Operating EBIDA margin: 6.3%
25. EBIDA margin: 9.8%
26. Maximum annual debt service coverage: 4.2x
27. Operating lease-adjusted coverage: 3.9x
28. Unrestricted days’ cash on hand: 210.6
29. Unrestricted reserves to total long-term debt: 200.2%
30. Capital expenditures to depreciation: 102.8%
31. Long-term debt to capitalization: 25.7%

“AA” rating category

32. Median operating margin: 3.4%
33. Excess margin: 8.1%
34. EBIDA margin: 12.4%
35. Maximum annual debt service coverage: 7.9x
36. Unrestricted days’ cash on hand: 309.0
37. Unrestricted reserves to total long-term debt: 327.8%
38. Capital expenditures to depreciation: 172.9%
39. Long-term debt to capitalization: 17.7%

“A” rating category

40. Median operating margin: 1.5%
41. Excess margin: 4.3%
42. Operating EBIDA margin: 6.2%
43. EBIDA margin: 8.8%
44. Maximum annual debt service coverage: 4.4x
45. Unrestricted days’ cash on hand: 207.7
46. Unrestricted reserves to total long-term debt: 196.7%
47. Capital expenditures to depreciation: 138.3%
48. Long-term debt to capitalization: 27.5%

“BBB” rating category

49. Median operating margin: -0.1%
50. Excess margin: 1.2%
51. Operating EBIDA margin: 3.9%
52. EBIDA margin: 6.0%
53. Maximum annual debt service coverage: 2.8x
54. Operating lease-adjusted coverage: 2.4x
55. Unrestricted days’ cash on hand: 113.2
56. Long-term debt to capitalization: 34.9%

Speculative-grade

57. Median operating margin: -1.0%
58. Excess margin: 0.0%
59. Operating EBIDA margin: 3.8%
60. EBIDA margin: 4.7%
61. Maximum annual debt service coverage: 1.9x
62. Operating lease-adjusted coverage: 1.7x
63. Unrestricted days’ cash on hand: 67.0
64. Long-term debt to capitalization: 50.2%

Payer mix, volume and growth

Source: Moody’s Ratings nonprofit hospital medians, fiscal 2024, released August 2025. 

65. Operating revenue growth: 9.3%
66. Operating expense growth: 7.3%
67. Operating cash flow margin: 6.3%
68. Medicare as a percentage of gross revenue: 48.3%
69. Medicare managed care as a percentage of gross revenue: 22.4%
70. Inpatient admissions growth: 4.8%
71. Outpatient surgery volume growth: 2.7%
72. Emergency room visit growth: 4%

Revenue, expense and volume trends

Source: Kaufman Hall National Hospital Flash Report March 2026 data (published May 18, 2026), sampled from more than 1,300 hospitals. Figures are national medians; percentages are year-over-year (March 2026 vs. March 2025) unless noted.

73. Calendar-year-to-date operating margin, including allocations: 1.7%
74. Net operating revenue per calendar day: up 8%
75. Gross operating revenue per calendar day: up 10%
76. Inpatient revenue per calendar day: up 7%
77. Outpatient revenue per calendar day: up 12%
78. Net patient service revenue per adjusted discharge: up 4%
79. Net patient service revenue per adjusted patient day: up 6%
80. Bad debt and charity care per calendar day: up 18%
81. Bad debt and charity care per calendar day, first-quarter year-to-date: up 15%
82. Bad debt and charity care as a percentage of gross operating revenue: up 5%
83. Total expense per calendar day: up 7%
84. Labor expense per calendar day: up 4%
85. Non-labor expense per calendar day: up 10%
86. Supply expense per calendar day: up 11%
87. Drug expense per calendar day: up 10%
88. Purchased-service expense per calendar day: up 8%
89. Full-time equivalents per adjusted occupied bed: down 8%
90. Discharges per calendar day: up 1%
91. Adjusted discharges per calendar day: up 4%
92. Average length of stay: down 3%
93. Emergency department visits per calendar day: up 1%
94. Operating room minutes per calendar day: up 6%
95. Outpatient revenue per calendar day, 500-plus bed hospitals: up 16.8%
96. Illustrative 60/40 investment portfolio return: -4.9%
97. Healthcare municipal bond issuance, year-to-date through early April 2026: $12.5 billion

Average adjusted expenses per inpatient day

Source: KFF / Kaiser State Health Facts, based on the 2024 American Hospital Association Annual Survey.

98. Nonprofit hospitals: $3,449
99. For-profit hospitals: $2,623
100. State/local government hospitals: $3,089

The post 100 hospital financial benchmarks | 2026 appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Nearly 1 in 5 healthcare workers in the U.S. is a registered nurse, according to May 2025 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. RNs account for about 19% of the nation’s combined healthcare practitioner and healthcare support workforce — a larger share than any other single occupation.

Below are 41 hospital occupations ranked by their share of the healthcare workforce, based on BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics data released May 15.

Editor’s note: Percentages reflect each occupation’s share of total combined employment in healthcare practitioner and technical occupations and healthcare support occupations (17.7 million workers nationally), per May 2025 BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics data. The figure in parentheses is each occupation’s total national employment across all industries. For occupations not classified by BLS as healthcare roles — including security guards, housekeeping cleaners, cooks and chaplains — hospital-specific employment was used in place of total national employment to calculate the percentage. All figures exclude self-employed workers. The list is not exhaustive.

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The word “provider” has become a contested term in American medicine, and the pushback is intensifying.

In February, the American College of Physicians published a policy paper in Annals of Internal Medicine, arguing that referring to physicians as “providers” is not just imprecise but an ethical problem. The ACP’s Ethics, Professionalism and Human Rights Committee concluded that the term undermines physicians’ clinical accountability, blurs distinctions in training and expertise, and erodes the physician-patient relationship by making it transactional. “The words physician and provider are not interchangeable,” the paper stated.

The AMA has held a similar position for years. Existing AMA guidance prohibits the medical association from using the term to refer to physicians in its own publications and calls on healthcare entities to use clinicians’ recognized titles and credentials in contracts and communications. At its Annual Meeting June 5-10 in Chicago, the AMA’s House of Delegates took this a step further, voting to formally oppose use of the term “provider” when referring to physicians. 

A closer look at the term’s origin in U.S. healthcare highlights why unwinding it may be more complicated than retiring a word. “Provider” entered federal health policy with the Social Security Amendments of 1965, which created Medicare and Medicaid. In the original statute, the term referred specifically to institutional entities (hospitals, extended care facilities and home health agencies) that received payment from the federal government. Physicians were addressed separately under their own defined category, “medical and other health services,” in Section 1861(s) of the Social Security Act.

Over subsequent decades, as Medicare and Medicaid expanded to cover additional practitioners, including physician assistants, nurse practitioners and clinical social workers, the term broadened in practice. In billing systems and common usage, “provider” came to describe any individual or entity eligible to receive reimbursement. The statute’s own definition of “provider of services” never changed to include individual physicians. In Medicare law, physicians fall under a separate category, “suppliers,” defined as distinct from providers of services.

Perhaps no single regulatory change illustrates the drift more concretely than CMS’ renaming the 10-digit number clinicians and healthcare organizations use to submit claims to Medicare from the “Unique Physician Identification Number” to the “National Provider Identifier” in 2007. 

Retiring “provider” from federal health policy would mean touching CMS rulemaking across dozens of programs, HIPAA transaction standards that govern the NPI system, the contracts of every major commercial insurer that mirrors federal language and state Medicaid programs in all 50 states.

The debate signals a tension between the administrative architecture of the federal healthcare payment system and the clinical identity of the workforce it covers — one that is unlikely to resolve quickly.

The post ‘Provider’ vs. ‘physician’: What federal law actually says and why it’s so hard to change appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Among four advanced practice provider positions, only nurse practitioners saw growth in employed workers between 2024 and 2025.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports on the number of employed people in each roll by state. The data, released May 13, calculated the number of employed people in 2025. Becker’s gathered data for all of the APP positions that the bureau tracks.

Between 2024 and 2025, physician assistants saw a decline of 0.3%, or 550 positions, in the number of employed staff, while nurse anesthetists saw a 9% decline. Nurse practitioners, however, saw an increase of 0.8%, or 2,630 positions. Nurse midwives saw a 16.4% decline, but that could be due to a number of states not reporting totals of employed midwives.

Here are the states and the District of Columbia with the number of employed APPs in 2025. 

Editor’s note: “NA” indicates that BLS did not report the number of employed positions. If there was no data for either 2024 and 2025, Becker’s put NA for the total change.

The post States with the highest, lowest APP job growth appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

The Hospital Insurance Trust Fund is estimated to pay full Medicare Part A benefits only through the second quarter of 2033, one quarter earlier than last year’s projection of the third quarter, according to the 2026 Social Security and Medicare Trustees Report published June 9.

Part A covers inpatient, skilled nursing, home health and hospice care services.

Four things to know:

1. At depletion, the program would cover 89% of scheduled Part A benefits, falling to 85% by 2050 before recovering to 93% by 2100. The fund had $255.7 billion in reserves at the end of 2025, and annual fund deficits are projected to return in 2027.
2. The trustees tied the worsening outlook in part to upward revisions in Medicare Advantage per capita spending, higher utilization and lower projected tax revenue from Social Security benefits following enactment of H.R. 1. The fund’s 75-year actuarial deficit widened to 0.56% of taxable payroll, up from 0.42% last year.
3. The fund’s projected depletion date first moved to 2033 last year, pulled forward from a prior 2036 estimate.
4. The trustees project Part D costs to be significantly higher than last year in every year of the projection, citing a 2025 surge in “certain specialty” drug usage, higher cost trends and lower rebates. The Supplementary Medical Insurance fund covering Parts B and D remains adequately financed indefinitely because premiums and federal contributions reset annually.

The post Medicare Advantage spending flagged as hospital fund depletion moves up: 4 notes appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

As the link between oral health and overall wellness becomes more widely recognized among patients, healthcare leaders are looking for more ways to integrate care to enhance patient outcomes.

More than 90% of adults in the U.S. agree that oral health is an important aspect of overall health, according to a new report from the Delta Dental Plans Association. Adults part of Gen Z are driving the increase, with 94% of Gen Z respondents believing that oral health is very or extremely important to their overall health, up from 89% in 2025. 

Henderson, Nev.-based PDS Health, an integrated healthcare organization with more than 1,200 locations in 24 states, has been spearheading efforts to bring medical and dental care closer together, including partnering with hospitals and health systems to expand its primary care model.

Brett Bingham, president of PDS Health Medical, recently spoke with Becker’s to discuss its growing primary care model and how care coordination is enhancing the patient experience.

Note: Responses were lightly edited for clarity and length.

Question: Can you tell me about how PDS Health’s primary care model is structured and how it integrates dental and medical care?

Brett Bingham: PDS Health has built a modern primary care model alongside one of the largest DSOs in the world. The differentiator is not simply co-location. It’s really the combination of the care model, the data model, the technology and the patient experience organized around the reality that oral health and overall health are inextricably linked — what we call the Mouth-Body Connection. 

Primary care is often treated as order takers and referral makers. Our model helps restore  primary care as the front door to prevention, early detection, longitudinal care and affordability.

Our structure really has three core elements. First, we use PDS Health’s existing scale, infrastructure and patient relationships to expand access to medical care. Second, we integrate medical and dental through shared workflows, shared data, coordinated protocols [and] clinical handoffs. Third, we’re really focused on creating value for patients, providers, payers, employers and health systems. Ultimately, it has to work for everybody. 

Epic serves as our platform across both dental and medical care, allowing clinicians to access integrated health records and coordinate care in ways many organizations discuss conceptually but struggle to operationalize. We’ve turned that into a practical operating model.

Q: What does coordinated care look like day-to-day between clinicians in this model? What does it look like for patients?

BB: I think the most important thing is that coordination has to be practical. Far too often in healthcare, we strategize about grandiose ideas that never come to [fruition], but it only creates value when it becomes part of everyday workflows, documentation, handoffs and cross-team communication. 

In our co-located practices, medical and dental teams participate in shared huddles each morning and coordinated care protocols. Dental teams may identify elevated blood pressure, diabetes risk, sleep-related concerns, inflammation or other clinical indicators that warrant medical follow-up. Likewise, medical teams may identify patients who need periodontal care, oral health support or dental follow-up as part of managing chronic conditions. The goal is not to blur professional roles. Oral health providers, physicians and advanced practice providers each practice at the top of their license within a system designed to connect their work. 

For patients, the experience is more seamless. Rather than being told to follow up elsewhere, care teams can often coordinate services while the patient is already in the practice. In many cases the patient can just walk across the hall to see the other provider while they’re there. The goal is for patients to feel that the team is focused on the whole person, not just treating one aspect of their body or another aspect of their care, such as a tooth or just a blood pressure reading. The idea is for our providers on both sides of the house to treat the whole patient and focus on overall health and help them with their entire healthcare journey.

Q: How can this model enhance early detection of systemic disease?

BB: Dental visits are a powerful touchpoint. Many patients see their dental team more frequently than they see their primary care provider, creating opportunities to identify clinical indicators that may warrant further evaluation, such as evidence of oral inflammation or hypertension. 

The key is what happens next. Our model connects those findings through shared clinical protocols, documentation and coordinated follow-up. Whether it be in a CBCT scan or medical grade imaging, or other observations that surface at the point of care in the dental or primary care environment, the information can be connected to the appropriate care pathway. 

We’ve seen examples where integrated dental-medical workflows led to the identification of potentially serious health concerns and expedited medical intervention. That’s where integration creates true value for patients and significantly improves health outcomes.

Q: How do you encourage medical and dental teams to think beyond their traditional silos?

BB: It starts with respect for both professions. Integration can’t feel like one side is subordinate to the other, and it’s not. Dental teams have deep patient relationships and identify important clinical signals, and primary care teams bring diagnoses, treatment and longitudinal disease management across the patient journey. Both are essential. 

From there, we make the clinical case clear. Everybody in healthcare has a story about why they entered healthcare and why they do what they do. As we focus on oral health and overall health and how they’re inextricably linked, we’re able to connect that purpose across our providers and our team members. 

Healthcare hasn’t historically been organized that way, but when teams understand the connection between oral health and broader health outcomes, the model becomes intuitive. 

The operating model is equally important. We support integration through shared protocols, coordinated handoffs and workflows that make collaboration achievable. Most clinicians want to do the right thing for patients. Our job is to make integration easy, so it becomes a natural part of care delivery rather than an additional burden.

Q: How are you measuring success within this integrated care model?

BB: We evaluate success across several dimensions. 

First is access. Across the U.S., primary care is needed in just about every community. One of the first pieces we’re looking at is whether each location expands primary care access in the market it’s serving. 

The second is the patient experience. We’ve received very positive feedback from patients, which tells us they are responding well to the model. 

The third is clinical integration. We’re measuring how effective our workflows connect and whether those pieces create a seamless encounter for the patient, rather than simply being co-located. 

The fourth is provider engagement. Provider engagement among those already part of our organization has been strong, and interest from clinicians who want to participate in the model continues to grow. Just this week, I received a message from a nurse practitioner who shared how much she valued the model, the team and the culture and everything, and wanted to know how she could take the next step toward ownership. I found that incredibly encouraging because it reflects the enthusiasm we’re seeing from clinicians who believe in a more integrated approach to care. 

The final piece is value. We have to demonstrate value for all stakeholders because, as we look to restore primary care, the model has to be meaningful, scalable, financially sustainable and ultimately better for patients.

Q: Who is PDS Health currently partnering with in the medical space for this model?

BB: PDS Health has a lot of rich connections and partners across the healthcare ecosystem. Recently, we signed an affiliation agreement with a large multi-state integrated delivery system in the West, which will be announced publicly in the near future. 

We’re also in active discussions with a number of other health systems that are looking for new approaches to expanding access and improving care coordination.

Health systems continue to face challenges related to primary care access, reimbursement cuts and population health strategy. We believe our model offers a practical way to strengthen coordinated care within local markets. 

We believe the model is highly complementary to health systems, and we’re actively exploring opportunities with organizations that share our vision for integrated care.

Q: Are you targeting specific areas where there are shortages of primary care and/or dental providers?

BB: As we consider our model and the connection points between oral health and medical health, we want to make sure we’re leveraging PDS Health’s strength. We’re looking at markets where PDS Health is already present and building from that ecosystem, while also considering who can partner well in that space, what the employer or payer environment looks like, and most importantly, what patients need. We are looking at primary care access scores because, ultimately, that’s where we can do the most good.

Q: How do you plan to expand this model down the line?

BB: We’ll continue to be disciplined in our growth strategy. The focus is not growth for growth’s sake, but thoughtful expansion into markets where we can create meaningful value for patients and the communities we serve. 

Health system partnerships will continue to be an important part of that strategy. We see a significant opportunity to collaborate with organizations that are already serving communities and looking for new ways to expand access to coordinated care.

As far as where it goes from here, I think there’s a lot of opportunity for growth and a lot of value that can be created through a more connected model of care. I don’t want to put artificial limits on what that could become because the culture at PDS Health is phenomenal, and there are a lot of things we’ll be able to accomplish as we continue partnering with like-minded organizations and individuals. Ultimately, I believe we’re going to be able to do a lot of good for the healthcare community.

The post The emerging healthcare model leaders are flocking to appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Hospitals in the top quartile for employee engagement are 4.2 times more likely to achieve top patient experience scores, according to a Press Ganey report that analyzed feedback from more than 2.6 million healthcare employees and physicians surveyed in 2025.

The report found that employee engagement rose from 3.97 to 4.01 over the past year — the largest gain in eight years — while physician engagement climbed from 3.96 to 4.01. But Press Ganey cautioned the recovery remains fragile, with 35% of employees and 37% of providers lacking confidence in senior leadership.

The cost of disengagement is significant: Disengaged caregivers are 2.6 times more likely to leave. At the average health system, defined as one with 3,000 employees, turnover costs more than $16 million annually. Turnover rates at low-engagement organizations run at 24%, compared with 15% at high-engagement systems.

The report also flagged early warning signals that many organizations may be missing. Among employees who plan to leave within three years, 34% exit within one year. Additionally, 26% of survey nonrespondents leave within a year, compared with 15% of respondents — suggesting nonresponse itself is a meaningful attrition indicator.

Turnover pressure is concentrated at both ends of the workforce: Generation Z employees show the highest turnover rate at 35%, while baby boomer turnover is rising from 19% to 21%. Advanced practice providers remain among the least engaged groups, with Press Ganey citing gaps in role clarity and involvement in decision-making. 

The post The 4.2x link between staff engagement and patient experience appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Nurses are less likely to leave when they have greater responsibility for patient care, according to an article published in Harvard Business Review.

The study followed 430 full-time ICU nurses at a large U.S. hospital over 26 months. Researchers analyzed data from the EHR to see nurses’ care activities, and used staffing, scheduling and HR data to determine the nurse workload on a granular level. The level of responsibility was defined as the number of patients a nurse was the primary provider for during a shift.

Here are the key findings:

1. A 10% increase in responsibility reduces the odds of quitting by more than 54%.

2. Nurses trusted with real responsibility reported feeling more central to the work on the unit, being seen by the organization as capable and important, and a deeper sense of ownership.

3. Nurses who received help from teammates during a shift had 40% lower odds of overtime-induced quitting and 22% lower work-pressure-triggered odds of quitting.

4. Leaders can apply these findings by training nurses to manage complex patients, operate sophisticated equipment and giving nurses latitude to use their clinical judgement.

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Austin-based UT Health Austin was named the most trusted healthcare brand in Monigle’s “2026 most trusted healthcare brands” section of its Humanizing Brand Experience Vol. 9 report.

Brand consultancy Monigle surveyed more than 3,000 nationally balanced U.S. healthcare consumers for the report, which examined trust, engagement, compassion and healthcare consumer sentiment.

Here are the 20 most trusted health system brands, according to the report:

1. UT Health Austin
2. Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Minn.)
3. Emory Healthcare (Atlanta)
4. Johns Hopkins Medicine (Baltimore)
5. BayCare (Clearwater, Fla.)
6. Penn Medicine (Philadelphia)
7. Mass General Brigham (Somerville, Mass.)
8. Duke Health (Durham, N.C.)
9. Mount Sinai Medical Center (Miami Beach, Fla.)
10. UCI Health (Orange, Calif.)
11. UT Health San Antonio
12. Bon Secours-St. Francis (Greenville, S.C.)
13. UVA Health (Charlottesville, Va.)
14. Virtua Health (Marlton, N.J.)
15. University of Maryland Medical System (Baltimore)
16. Hoag (Newport Beach, Calif.)
17. Vanderbilt Health (Nashville, Tenn.)
18. University of Iowa Health Care (Iowa City, Iowa)
19. Penn State Health (Hershey, Pa.)
20. UAB Medicine (Birmingham, Ala.)

The post 20 most trusted health system brands appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

While hospitals and health systems work to recruit and retain the next generation of healthcare talent, another group is also top of mind: those nearing retirement age.

A recent study found that leaving the workforce before retirement age may accelerate cognitive decline, and working into older ages could help delay it. For employers, the case for retaining experienced employees is also pressing amid concerns of a wave of baby boomer retirements that could thin institutional knowledge across the workforce. 

To keep their most experienced team members engaged, health systems are building structured pathways that let them stay in the workforce longer, including flexible scheduling, phased transitions and mentorship programs.

At Annapolis, Md.-based Luminis Health, employee well-being is a top priority — including support for those approaching retirement, Chief Human Resources Officer Amy Beales told Becker’s. One area of focus has been encouraging earlier and more intentional retirement planning conversations between leaders and staff members.

“By discussing timing, scheduling flexibility, and phased transitions well in advance, we can adjust responsibilities or hours in ways that better support the employee while also helping the organization plan ahead,” Ms. Beales said. “In many cases, this approach has helped retain experienced employees longer, strengthen knowledge transfer and mentorship, and reduce operational gaps during leadership or staff transitions.”

Other systems are formalizing those transitions into structured programs. Santa Barbara, Calif.-based Cottage Health has made succession planning a key focus, CHRO Cara Williams told Becker’s in 2025, implementing a program that allows retiring employees to phase their retirement over two years while building a robust succession plan across all levels.

Nurses are a key focus. Morgantown, W.Va.-based WVU Medicine offers a work-life balance program that allows qualifying nurses near retirement to work part-time while receiving full-time benefits, a structure designed to boost retention, Assistant Vice President of System Nursing Services Jessica Huffman, DNP, RN, told Becker’s in September.

Physicians are also a top priority. They are leaving clinical practice earlier than ever as a result of stress and administrative burden, according to a May study conducted by American Medical Association researchers. The shift comes as the U.S. faces a projected physician shortage of between 13,500 and 86,000 by 2036 — a gap that could be reduced by about 40,000 simply by increasing the average retirement age by two years, the researchers found.

Physician CEOs have been especially focused on retaining later-career physicians, with many systems offering part-time roles and flexible schedules to meet their evolving needs.

At Duluth, Minn.-based Essentia Health, section leaders meet twice a year with the colleagues to discuss development, regardless of career stage, CEO David Herman, MD, told Becker’s in 2025. When one physician considering retirement said they would prefer to focus on inpatient work, and another at a similar stage wanted only outpatient work, Essentia restructured their duties to meet their needs.

“Suddenly they both said, ‘I think I have another five years left in me,’” Dr. Herman said. “The things that create energy are different for everyone.”

Beyond scheduling, systems are also opening up new paths for experienced physicians who want to stay involved in different ways. Richmond, Va.-based VCU Health, for instance, creates opportunities for physicians pursuing MBAs or transitioning into leadership roles. CEO Marlon Levy, MD, told Becker’s in 2025 that many physicians late in their careers are not looking to leave entirely.

“They want to continue to participate — often not either administratively or clinically, but both,” Dr. Levy said. “It’s incumbent upon administrative teams to understand that doctors feel like they may have more to contribute in the administrative or leadership space than they had in the past.”

The post How hospitals are fending off a retirement wave appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Larger states such as California and Texas employ the highest number of registered nurses nationwide. But when measured by concentration — the number of RNs employed per 1,000 jobs in a state’s economy — both states rank much lower, according to May 2025 data released May 15 from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

West Virginia had the nation’s highest RN concentration at 33.4 nurses per 1,000 jobs, while Utah ranked last at 15.8.

Nationwide, general medical and surgical hospitals employed the largest share of registered nurses, accounting for about 56% of RN employment, or roughly 1.9 million jobs. Physicians’ offices and home healthcare services employed the next-largest shares of RNs.

Below are the employment-per-1,000-job figures for registered nurses in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, according to BLS data.

1. West Virginia — 33.391

2. South Dakota — 32.170

3. Delaware — 29.478

4. North Dakota — 26.403

5. Missouri — 25.992

6. Ohio — 25.897

7. Maine — 25.827

8. Alabama — 25.707

9. Louisiana — 25.311

10. Kentucky — 25.144

11. Mississippi — 24.988

12. Vermont — 24.392

13. Massachusetts — 24.247

14. Pennsylvania — 24.161

15. Nebraska — 24.136

16. Michigan — 23.831

17. Minnesota — 23.766

18. Connecticut — 23.648

19. Kansas — 23.514

20. Florida — 23.156

21. Wisconsin — 23.138

22. Alaska — 23.057

23. Illinois — 22.780

24. Arizona — 22.581

25. Arkansas — 22.554

26. New Hampshire — 22.517

27. North Carolina — 22.486

28. Oklahoma — 22.409

29. Iowa — 22.077

30. Tennessee — 22.021

31. New Jersey — 21.624

32. South Carolina — 21.583

33. Indiana — 21.550

34. Montana — 21.410

35. New York — 21.244

36. Georgia — 20.648

37. New Mexico — 20.648

38. Hawaii — 20.622

39. Oregon — 20.198

40. Rhode Island — 20.132

41. Idaho — 19.690

42. Washington — 19.506

43. Texas — 19.287

44. Maryland — 19.149

45. Wyoming — 19.000

46. Colorado — 18.959

47. Virginia — 18.856

48. California — 18.609

49. Nevada — 17.447

50. District of Columbia — 16.305

51. Utah — 15.797

The post Where RNs are most concentrated: Rankings by state appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Department of Veterans Affairs staff did not detect a prohibited weapon that undercover Government Accountability Office investigators brought into any of 30 tested VA medical facilities — including two with metal detectors — according to a GAO report publicly released May 13. 

Nine things to know:

1. The GAO was asked to review security at VA medical facilities. The report examines the nature of reported criminal activity at VA facilities, the extent to which the VA has implemented federal security requirements and detected vulnerabilities, and VA processes for incorporating security and threat information into infrastructure planning. GAO reviewed VA policies, crime data and risk assessment data; conducted covert tests at a non-generalizable sample of 30 facilities; and interviewed VA personnel and veterans in Arkansas and California.

2. VA staff also did not confront an investigator drinking in plain view from a bottle labeled vodka in 25 of 26 covert tests, which is generally prohibited at VA facilities.

3. The roughly 74,700 crimes reported at VA medical facilities in fiscal 2024 and 2025 were overwhelmingly nonviolent, including disorderly conduct, theft and drug offenses, according to the GAO’s analysis. The average crime rate over the two-year period was about twice as high at urban facilities (214 crimes per facility) than rural facilities (123 crimes per facility) — consistent with a Department of Justice report on overall criminal trends.

4. The Interagency Security Committee, of which the VA is a member, developed a risk management standard that federal agencies are required to follow. The GAO found the VA has not fully implemented all ISC requirements, including documenting decisions on the security strategies it will adopt or measuring the performance of those strategies.

5. The VA has a performance goal to address security gaps through capital planning, and while it has met its overall security-gap planning goal, two of 18 regions did not in fiscal years 2023 through 2025, the report said. GAO attributed this to VA headquarters not communicating to the regions that they were missing the goal.

6. GAO made three recommendations to the VA secretary: Develop a plan with milestones for fully implementing the ISC’s risk management standard; assess the resources needed to fully implement it; and develop a mechanism for VA headquarters to communicate with regional officials on their progress in meeting the 95% security gap closure planning goal. 

7. A VA spokesperson told Becker’s in a May 20 statement that the “second Trump administration inherited from the Biden Administration a fractured VA police force plagued with problems,” adding that the VA identified many of the issues highlighted in the GAO report independently in early 2025 and has been working to fix them.

8. The spokesperson said successful efforts include establishing the Office of Security and Preparedness — led by its own assistant secretary — and consolidating VA police operations under that office. All VA police now report to a law enforcement professional with a direct line to the VA secretary’s office, an improvement from when VA police reported to nearly 150 different medical center directors, the spokesperson said.

9. The spokesperson also said the Trump administration worked with the Office of Personnel Management to reclassify VA police officers to qualify for higher pay, which is expected to improve recruitment, retention and upward mobility.

The post VA security failed all 30 covert weapons tests: GAO  appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Philadelphia-based Penn Medicine reported an operating income of $238.5 million (2.4% margin) for the nine months ended March 31, up 46.3% from $163 million (1.9% margin) in the same period last year, according to financial documents filed May 20.

The results follow the April 1, 2025, acquisition of Doylestown (Pa.) Health. Doylestown Hospital, a 245-bed teaching hospital, became Penn Medicine’s seventh hospital and is now known as Penn Medicine Doylestown Health.

Six things to know:

1. Operating revenue climbed 15.2% year over year. Penn Medicine reported total operating revenue of $10.1 billion for the nine-month period, up from $8.8 billion during the same period in 2025. Net patient service revenue increased 13.5% year over year to $8.5 billion.

2. Expenses rose 14.9% year over year. Total operating expenses before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization increased 14.9% year over year to $9.5 billion. Salaries and wages rose to $4 billion, while supplies and service costs increased to $4.1 billion. Interest expenses ($68.5 million) and depreciation and amortization ($335.3 million) costs dragged down the health system’s overall performance for the nine-month period.

3. EBITDA topped $642 million. Penn Medicine posted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $642 million for the nine-month period, up from $540 million during the same period in 2025.

4. Net income rose sharply. Penn Medicine reported $748.2 million in net income, up from $431.2 million a year earlier. The increase was aided by $242.1 million in unrealized gains on alternative and equity investments and $183.1 million in net realized gains, contributions and other support.

5. The health system’s balance sheet expanded significantly. Total assets reached $17.2 billion as of March 31, 2026, compared with $15.4 billion a year earlier. Net assets grew to $10.7 billion from $9.7 billion. Long-term debt also increased, rising to $2.6 billion from $2.3 billion, reflecting capital investment activity during the period.

6. Volumes grew across several categories. Volume metrics reflect the Doylestown addition and underlying demand growth. Adult and neonatal admissions rose to 120,297 from 105,711 in the prior-year period. Emergency room visits increased to 370,992 from 332,307, and outpatient visits grew to 4.364 million from 3.938 million. Staffed adult and neonatal beds increased to 3,369 from 3,102, reflecting the addition of Doylestown Hospital’s 245-bed capacity. Occupancy held at 78%, up slightly from 77.5%.

The post Penn Medicine operating income grows to $238M after Doylestown Health acquisition: 6 things to know appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has removed the two vice-chairs of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an expert panel that provides clinical preventive health recommendations to Congress, an HHS official confirmed to Becker’s May 21.

John Wong, MD, and Esa Davis, MD, led the task force. The group assigns grades to preventive services, which private health insurance covers without cost-sharing under the ACA.

According to documents obtained by Becker’s, the leaders were subject to a review under revised governance procedures, and the terminations did not stem from performance issues. The change comes just ahead of a May 23 nomination deadline for new members, and both are still able to apply.

The task force has been effectively sidelined for the past year, with its most recent meeting in March 2025. Since then, meetings have been postponed, with one cancellation occurring during the government shutdown. Last month, Mr. Kennedy said the volunteer group had been “lackadaisical and negligent” for two decades, adding it will meet more often than the planned three times per year.

“We strongly urge HHS to restore the USPSTF’s long-standing, transparent process for selecting members, specifically clinicians with expertise in the fields of preventive medicine and primary care,” a May 20 American Medical Association statement said. “We also implore HHS to commit to once again holding regular task force meetings to ensure its important work can continue without further delay. Our patients’ lives depend on it.”

Last year, HHS tried to overhaul the CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices. Subsequent changes to the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule were met with a legal challenge. In April, the Trump administration filed notice that it would appeal the federal court ruling.

The post RFK Jr. ousts 2 preventive services task force leads  appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Jacksonville-based Mayo Clinic in Florida has received a $75 million gift to support its expansion initiative.

Four things to know:

1. The donation from Paula and Randy Ringhaver will support the Lee Ringhaver Tower, a newly expanded hospital tower named in honor of the couple’s son, Randal “Lee” Ringhaver Jr., who died from leukemia in 1980 at 8 1/2 months old, according to a May 21 health system news release.

2. A five-story expansion of the tower began serving patients in 2025, adding 121 new rooms and digital technologies designed to support personalized care. The tower also includes shell space for future growth and capacity for three additional stories.

3. Including the Lee Ringhaver Tower expansion, Mayo Clinic’s “Bold. Forward. Unbound.” initiative encompasses more than 725,000 square feet of new clinical, research and education space. The initiative also includes the Duan Family Building, which contains the country’s’ first carbon ion therapy system, a biomanufacturing expansion and a future research and education building.

4. Across Mayo Clinic, “Bold. Forward. Unbound.” will add more than 4 million square feet of new space across campuses in Arizona, Florida and Minnesota.

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John Dubis, who spent more than 36 years in healthcare leadership, including as president and CEO of Edgewood, Ky.-based St. Elizabeth Healthcare, died May 14. He was 71.

During his tenure at the six-hospital system, Mr. Dubis was known for his integrity, compassion and vision, guiding the organization through continued growth and a commitment to high-quality patient care, according to his obituary. 

Mr. Dubis joined St. Elizabeth Healthcare in 2007 as COO and was CEO from 2011 until his retirement in 2015 after a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. 

St. Elizabeth Medical Center and St. Luke Hospitals merged to form St. Elizabeth Healthcare in late 2008, according to the system’s website. Mr. Dubis played a key role in the merger and, under his leadership, the system added 1,000 employees, improved operations and invested millions in facility improvements and new programs, The Enquirer reported Feb. 13, 2015.

Mr. Dubis discussed the merger in a 2012 interview with Smart Business, highlighting the need for clear communication, a patient-centered approach and adaptability amid a changing healthcare environment.

“It’s easy to get negative and pessimistic about what’s going to happen in the future. I frankly look at it as an opportunity to lead ourselves in a different way that could be even better than what we have today,” Mr. Dubis said. “This is a new world in which having a strong desire to embrace change and work within the abstract and uncomfortable zone of unfamiliarity is what it’s going to take to guide your organization to be successful down the road.”

Mr. Dubis also held executive leadership roles at several other hospitals and health systems, including SSM St. Mary’s Health Center in Jefferson City, Mo., SSM St. Francis Hospital and Health Center in Chicago, and SSM Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center in St. Louis, according to his obituary.

He served on several boards and organizations, including the Kentucky Hospital Association and the Greater Cincinnati Health Council.

One comment on his obituary described him as a great mentor and friend during their years at St. Elizabeth. He will be remembered for his “steady presence, kind heart and deep dedication to helping others,” according to his obituary.

The post Former Kentucky system CEO dies appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

The Civica Foundation has received a $3.2 million grant to launch a program aimed at expanding access to generic medications for rural hospitals in nine states.

The Civica Rural Hospital Program will support rural and critical access hospitals in Hawaii, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming, according to a May 7 news release from the foundation. The initiative is designed to help hospitals secure access to generic medicines frequently affected by national drug shortages.

The three-year pilot program is expected to support approximately 225 rural hospitals representing an estimated 6,750 hospital beds. The Civica Foundation said grant funding will cover per-bed membership fees for eligible hospitals, allowing them to join Civica at no cost. Civica also said it will waive annual purchase commitments for participating hospitals.

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Mona Baset, vice president of digital engagement at Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Health, is stepping down from her role.

Ms. Baset announced her departure in a May 20 LinkedIn post.

She has served in the role since April 2022. Ms. Baset said she will take a career break.

The post Intermountain digital engagement VP steps down appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Cleveland-based MetroHealth System plans to deploy smart technology at 500 patient rooms across five hospitals.

The public, safety-net health system intends to bring Artisight’s virtual nursing, virtual sitting and AI-powered fall monitoring and voice-command capabilities to its new Glick Center in Cleveland, hospitals in Brecksville, Cleveland Heights and Parma, and rehabilitation institute in Old Brooklyn over the next two years.

“Hospital smart rooms represent a shift toward patient-centered, technology-driven healthcare,” said Jill Evans, MSN, RN, chief nursing informatics officer and executive director of virtual care at MetroHealth, in a May 21 news release. “By automating tasks, improving safety, and enhancing comfort, these rooms enable providers to deliver more attentive and personalized care.”

MetroHealth selected the platform based on factors including staffing efficiency and cost reduction, faster discharges, fall rate reductions, HCAHPS score improvements, and caregiver satisfaction.

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The National Council of State Boards of Nursing found the District of Columbia has the most licensed nurses per capita, while Utah is the state with the fewest for the second year in a row.

The organization created a course of nursing licensure statistics in the U.S. and its territories. The data was compiled using the NCSBN’s database and Nursys, an electronic information system where regulatory bodies enter licensure data. All of the council’s 58 members shared licensure data, which amounted to 6,903,665 registered and practical nurses — up from 6,870,362 last year.

According to the data, Wyoming and Vermont had the fewest licensed nurses in their states overall, at 9,620 and 13,528, respectively. Meanwhile, California and New York had the most licensed nurses at 708,141 and 610,207, respectively. 

Becker’s used 2025 Census data to calculate how many nurses are in each state per 100,000 population. Here are the five with the most and the five with the fewest nurses.

Most

Fewest

The post States with the most, fewest licensed nurses per capita appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

CMS’ latest proposal to cap certain state Medicaid payments has drawn immediate pushback from hospital groups, which argue the plan will further decrease access to care and destabilize hospitals that rely on supplemental Medicaid funding.

The agency proposed a rule May 20 that would create new limits for Medicaid state-directed payments and certain fee-for-service payments, aligning them more closely with Medicare rates. CMS said the proposed changes would reduce Medicaid spending by more than $775 billion over 10 years, including $510 billion in federal savings.

Under the proposal, CMS would cap certain state-directed payments for hospital, nursing facility and qualified practitioner services at academic medical centers at 100% of Medicare rates in Medicaid expansion states and 110% of Medicare rates in nonexpansion states for rating periods beginning on or after July 4, 2025. The agency also proposed extending the payment rate limit to all state-directed payments for all services in all states, the District of Columbia and territories for rating periods beginning on or after Jan. 1, 2029.

The American Hospital Association questioned how the policy would be implemented and how it could affect providers’ ability to rely on Medicaid payments.

“Healthcare-related taxes and Medicaid supplemental payment programs are longstanding tools that help address chronically inadequate base Medicaid payment rates, and the changes to these financing systems and related provider payments will have very real consequences for access to care in communities across the nation,” Ashley Thompson, senior vice president for public policy analysis and development at the AHA, said in a May 20 statement. “Projected reductions in funding for essential healthcare services will not only limit access to care for Medicaid patients. When hospitals and providers are forced to reduce services — or even close entirely — everyone in a community is impacted.”

America’s Essential Hospitals also criticized the proposal, arguing it would cut state-directed payments by hundreds of billions of dollars more than the Congressional Budget Office projected.

“CMS’ proposed cuts to state-directed payments go far beyond what Congress intended,” Jennifer DeCubellis, president and CEO of America’s Essential Hospitals, said. “By cutting SDPs by hundreds of billions of dollars more than the Congressional Budget Office projected, CMS will devastate essential hospitals’ ability to provide high quality care to the patients and communities they serve.”

Ms. DeCubellis added that Medicaid state-directed payments are a “financial lifeline” for essential hospitals and help states improve access to care for vulnerable patients.

The Federation of American Hospitals also urged CMS to work with hospitals as it advances the proposal.

“Patients rely on their local hospital to be there for them whenever they need care,” Charlene MacDonald, president and CEO of the Federation of American Hospitals, said in a statement. “A strong, sustainable Medicaid program is essential to maintaining that commitment, especially in rural areas where hospitals are often the largest employer and the only source of care for miles, and state directed payments are a critical part of that equation.”

The proposed rule includes a 60-day comment period. The AHA said it plans to issue a regulatory advisory to members detailing the proposal.

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At its heart, improving the patient experience is all about communication. Feedback from patients consistently and overwhelmingly points us to this focus. More than anything, patients and families want compassionate and clear communication with every person they interact with. They also want coordinated communication from the team so that they understand the plan of care. These communication needs and expectations are at the top of every patient experience data set and are a guiding priority for any patient experience improvement effort. Interventions to improve the experience are largely designed to facilitate communication, build bridges between caregivers, patients and families, and connect the dots for all. 

Solving this “communication puzzle” is as complicated now as it has ever been. New technology is constantly being introduced into the care setting. Production pressure on care teams raises the stakes for every interaction. Finally, a new workforce is emerging that adds to the complexity of this moment.

Articles in the media every week examine the impact of ever-present devices on the newest generations entering the workforce. Gen Z workers are the first generation to grow up with ubiquitous personal devices. Many of these articles also note that although we are more electronically connected than ever, we feel more isolated. Our devices bring us more information than ever, but they don’t meet our needs for real and meaningful connection.

This dynamic is also present in healthcare. Caregivers including nurses, physicians, transporters and housekeepers, all carry devices. We can see the task before us on our device — charting, room turnover or dispatches to pick up the next patient — but we can miss the person right in front of us. Studies of Gen Z nurses, for example, illustrate this dynamic. They show a generation that craves connection more than ever. ICombined with the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic drove the greatest period of workforce turnover healthcare has ever seen, the industry now faces a significant communication challenge. How do we enable our team members — who are more device-focused than ever and who have less training in the art of communicating with patients and families — to meet the needs and expectations of those we serve?

There are a couple of things to consider as we think about how to approach this “harder than ever” patient experience communication challenge. 

First, the distracting, enveloping blizzard of devices and sources of information that make it so easy to ignore the person in front of us is not just a challenge for Gen Z but for every healthcare worker. The problem is accelerating, but its roots have been planted over the last decade. In general, the effort to create truly integrated clinical and management information systems that support the front line is still very much a work in progress.

One hospital CEO noted publicly this month that his system was using more than 150 different patched together “products” and platforms to support its operations. Another large and prominent health system chief quality officer tracked seven different information and communication subsystems that did not talk to each other during a recent shift in the emergency department, consuming more than 50% of his time toggling between them. Thus, the primary task of rationalizing and integrating the “blizzard of electronic complexity and distraction” must continue, not only for Gen Z workers, but for all healthcare employees. 

There are some hopeful examples to look to. For example, Prisma Health, publishing in NEJM Catalyst, documented the gains from their commitment to a single electronically enabled Clinical Operating System, called “Pulse,” including a 59% improvement in top box patient experience scores and a 57% decline in serious safety events. These dramatic win-win-win results mirror what we are seeing among peers committed to establishing a single, aligned clinical operating system built to support the work of front-line team members and managers rather than piecemeal efforts developed over time. 

This technology infrastructure work should be accompanied by communication skill building and training for the newest members of our healthcare workforce. Many of these employees came to their jobs during the pandemic without some of the interpersonal communication training that previous generations received. In addition, many came to front-line roles with less practical, hands-on experience than previous generations. The response to COVID-19 created this crunch. Now is the time to address these gaps with training, support and mentoring. 

Finally, efforts to address the challenges being faced by the newer members of our workforce should leverage the strengths and perspectives they bring to the table. All of us with kids, friends or acquaintances in this cohort marvel at how quickly and easily they navigate electronic communication streams and make them “work for them” in organizing their lives. Conversely, Gen Z’s sense of isolation and desire for human connection mirrors the same desire from our patients. If we can bridge the gap with technology and skill building for our colleagues, we have the potential for an enormous win-win: a more engaged workforce and better served patients and families. 

We must work to both tame the blizzard of disparate communication sources and systems and strengthen skills and habits in our workforce to provide the communication that patients, families and caregivers all crave. Gen Z team members should not just be the “subject” but key members of the alignment effort at the unit, service line and enterprise-wide level. We need their talent for cutting through the electronic fog, and we need to tap into their heightened yearning for human connection for the good of all. 

The post Healthcare’s communication puzzle is getting more complex appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Fifty-nine percent of healthcare executives said in a recent survey that physician specialists are the most difficult clinical job to fill, but the specialty that is most difficult for systems varies by state.

Hospitals and health systems are grappling with a national physician shortage. 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. Pay and financial incentives used to have the greatest impact on physician recruitment, but in recent years, physicians are making their decisions based on other factors, such as culture and work-life balance.

Becker’s spoke with three leaders about which specialties are the most difficult to recruit, and how they are confronting this challenge.

Adena Medical Group

Leaders at the Chillicothe, Ohio-based system are most concerned about any specialty with a lot of subspecialized fellowships.

“Take urology — we certainly have the volume for general urologic services, but a lot of urologists coming out of training are not general urologists willing to take hospital call,” Brooke Burns, president of Adena Medical Group, told Becker’s. “They’re subspecialized, and that makes recruitment really challenging.”

The system is having similar difficulties with recruiting noninvasive cardiology clinicians, especially electrophysiology, and psychiatrists.

As a medium-size health system, Adena finds it difficult to compete with larger systems that can offer a reduced call burden and greater work-life balance. This makes it difficult for the system to maintain inpatient coverage and call. 

To solve this, the system is using advanced practice providers when appropriate and bringing in locum physicians from other health systems to fill call gaps. It also established residency programs in family medicine, internal medicine and psychiatry, along with a sports medicine fellowship to improve its pipeline. 

Henry Ford Medical Group

Leaders at the Detroit-based system are most concerned about radiologists and anesthesiologists.

“It’s not that it’s particularly difficult to recruit someone into those roles,” John Deledda, MD, chief medical officer of Henry Ford Medical Group and chairperson for the department of emergency medicine, told Becker’s. “The challenge is that the economics around those specialties are starting to negatively impact our ability to recruit. It’s at what cost we can find them, and how we prevent that cost from ultimately landing on the patient.”

In radiology, for example, AI disruptions, geographic considerations and payer mix have compounded to make compensation escalate. 

“What ends up happening is organizations in the same geography start competing against each other, offering higher and higher rates, and physicians jump from system to system chasing compensation,” Dr. Deledda said. “Competing organizations are not sitting down locally and saying, ‘The cost of healthcare in our geography is getting out of hand — we need to do something about this together.’ Instead, we’re all sitting in rooms strategizing about how to pay someone else’s radiologist more to bring them into our workforce. That’s an unfortunate and unsustainable trend.”

A similar trend is playing out among anesthesiologists, with the added layer of complexity since there are multiple certified positions that can provide anesthesiology services, such as board-certified anesthesiologists, certified registered nurse anesthetists, and in some states, certified anesthesia associates. This has led to compensation compression.

Henry Ford Health System is tackling this by building clinically integrated networks, value-based contracts, shared savings plans and downside risk arrangements that benefit patients by controlling cost and elevating quality, Dr. Deledda said. About 60% of the system’s revenue comes from value-based contracts, a number well above average. 

MaineHealth

The Portland-based system has found primary care specialties such as family medicine and internal medicine the most difficult to recruit across the system. In hospitals specifically, anesthesiologists, particularly pediatric anesthesiologists, and radiologists are the most difficult to recruit, followed by oncologists and nephrology. As with other systems, the difficulty stems from physicians subspecializing and tough competition in pay.

System leaders are expanding residency programs, building relationships with external agencies and building pipelines to bring in new physicians. They are also reconsidering which services are needed at which hospitals.

“The days of having someone on site five days a week are largely gone,” Adrian Moran, MD, chief medical and transformation officer at MaineHealth, told Becker’s. “We try to tailor clinical needs realistically — not compromising patient care or quality, but being honest about workforce shortages and how people want to practice medicine. Meeting everyone somewhere in the middle requires constant conversation, and it’s fragile.”

These conversations include asking if an on-site radiologist is needed or if the same quality of service can be provided remotely. In anesthesiology, leaders are pushing physicians to be more flexible about supervision models, and challenging critical care and emergency medicine physicians to consider if they can take on services traditionally performed by anesthesia. 

“We have to think broadly and innovatively about who delivers care, because if we don’t, we’ll start closing hospitals,” Dr. Moran said. “And when smaller hospitals close, those patients flow to larger systems, which then face the same pressures at greater volume.”

The post The most difficult physician specialties to recruit appeared first on Becker’s Hospital Review | Healthcare News & Analysis.

Carl Cameron was promoted to executive vice president and COO of Holyoke, Mass.-based Holyoke Medical Center and Valley Health Systems, according to a May 20 news release shared with Becker’s.

Mr. Cameron joined Holyoke Medical Center in 2001 and has held roles including COO, vice president of operations, CIO and director of information systems, according to the release.

Holyoke Medical Center is a 219-bed independent community hospital with more than 1,800 employees.

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