On July 4th, President Trump signed H.R. 1, also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, fundamentally altering the landscape for the nation’s social safety net. After months of anticipation, social safety net providers, managed care organizations (MCOs), and state governments are now grappling with how the new law’s changes to Medicaid eligibility and funding will impact their operations and vulnerable individuals.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, some 7.8 million people are
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AI Is Supercharging Phishing Scams – Are Hospitals Ready?
Hospitals and healthcare systems are facing a growing cyber threat, one that’s being greatly accelerated by generative AI. While much of the public conversation around AI has focused on job displacement or deepfakes, AI’s role in cybercrime has expanded. Phishing attacks, in particular, have become more effective and easier to launch, posing serious risks to healthcare organizations, which already operate under intense operational pressure.
In the second half of 2024, phishing incidents
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When “Free” Isn’t Free: The Hidden Risks of Community Connect EHR Models for Local Hospitals
Across the country, rural and community hospitals are being offered a familiar pitch: access to a premium electronic health record (EHR) platform at a fraction of the cost, thanks to a partnership with a larger health system. These so-called Community Connect arrangements promise improved care coordination, seamless data sharing, and financial relief. But behind the headlines, these models carry tradeoffs that many smaller hospitals overlook—chief among them, the potential loss of
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How AI Can Prepare Nurses for High-Stakes, Emotionally Charged Conversations
Nurses aren’t just on the front lines of healthcare. They’re also at the front lines of emotional trauma.
Whether it's telling a patient their cancer is terminal, helping grieving parents understand a devastating diagnosis, or de-escalating a distraught family member, the emotional labor required of nurses is immense. These moments demand more than clinical expertise—they require deep empathy, listening, and communication skill. But most nurses enter the workforce underprepared for
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How CIOs Can Close The Interoperability Divide in Hospitals
Patients may be seen by various doctors and clinicians during treatment, such as a primary care physician who diagnoses diabetes and monitors overall health, an endocrinologist who adjusts medications and monitors blood sugar, and a dietitian who assists with nutrition. If these professionals can’t work together and share information, it creates a disconnect that impacts the quality of care delivery.
Interoperability is the missing piece to ensuring teams understand patients and their
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5 Levels of Identity Intelligence in Healthcare
Identity in healthcare begins with knowing who’s who, but there are different degrees of “knowing.”
Think of everyone you know: family, friends, colleagues and acquaintances. Some you know extremely well and some you know only superficially. And that’s fine. You need to know a lot about your partner to have a happy marriage; you don’t need to know as much about your dentist to get your teeth cleaned.
Similarly, there are five levels at which healthcare organizations can know
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Remote Monitoring After Cardiac Surgery Reveals Undetected AFib Events, Study Finds
Atrial fibrillation, or AFib, is one of the most common complications following cardiac surgery. It affects up to 40% of patients, depending on the procedure. During the early recovery period, patients are continuously monitored in the ICU using telemetry and intermittent ECGs to detect irregular heart rhythms. But once patients are discharged, that monitoring stops, and clinicians have little visibility into patients’ recovery.
That gap can carry clinical consequences. AFib increases
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From Burnout to Balance, Tech is Transforming Work: Lessons from the Nursing Shortage
Work for the modern person is not like an episode of “Severance,” the dystopian show where employees surgically separate their work lives and personal lives to achieve a perceived work-life balance.
The reality for most of us correlates better to a plate-spinning circus act. The key lies in managing multiple aspects of life simultaneously, focusing on what needs attention most urgently. No two plates are ever spinning at the same speed at the same time, but we work to keep them in motion.
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4 Steps to Safely Implement AI in Healthcare and Pharmacy Operations
Artificial intelligence (AI) is already transforming healthcare, including pharmacy operations, clinical workflows, and business processes. As adoption accelerates, it's essential to ensure that AI is implemented responsibly—especially given the sensitive nature of patient data and the complexities of care delivery. Success in this space requires a balance of high tech and high touch: robust human oversight and ethical governance. Here are four key steps to help healthcare and pharmacy
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Beyond Budgets: How IT Outsourcing is a Strategic Imperative for Health Systems
After years of severe financial pressure intensified by the pandemic, U.S. health systems face shifting service demands, soaring costs, murky and unpredictable policy decisions, workforce shortages, supply chain disruptions, increasingly frequent and significant cyberthreats, and stagnating reimbursement rates that lag behind inflation. Healthcare costs have risen significantly, with general inflation increasing by 14.1% from 2022 to 2024. In contrast, Medicare net inpatient payment rates have
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