In recent months, headlines on both sides of the Atlantic have told the same story. U.S. hospitals are cutting back surgical schedules because they simply don’t have enough staff, while NHS figures show more than seven million people still waiting for treatment in England. A regrettably high number of procedures are cancelled on the day because the workforce is stretched too thin.
For patients, the consequences are deeply personal - longer waits, worsening conditions, and avoidable
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Health IT | News, Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
Beyond Email: Why Communication Failures are Driving the Nursing Crisis
What You Should Know
- New research from Firstup reveals that 81% of hospital nurses attribute patient care issues directly to organizational miscommunication.
- With traditional channels like email failing a "deskless" workforce, communication gaps are now a primary driver of clinician burnout and a "retention tax" costing hospitals an average of $61,110 per lost RN.
Firstup 2026 State of Nursing Communication Report
As hospitals nationwide navigate margin pressure and a
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What’s Replacing Traditional NLP in Risk Adjustment and Why It Matters
The RADV expansion isn’t the real story. Neither is V28.
The real story is what happened when both arrived simultaneously—and exposed a truth the industry had been quietly ignoring: the AI that powered risk adjustment for the past decade was never built for the precision, explainability, or adaptability the new environment demands.
Traditional NLP succeeded because the tolerance for error was high enough to absorb its limitations. That tolerance just evaporated.
The 70% Accuracy Nobody
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The Proprietary Trap: Why ‘Open Data’ is the Key to Scaling Your Dental Practice in 2026
Care coordination in the dental industry barely exists.
While the medical industry has made progress toward interoperability with several recent initiatives, dentistry continues to lag behind its healthcare counterparts in supporting the principles of “open data,” which allow information to be freely accessed, used, and shared across platforms without restrictive barriers.
Improved data-sharing offers significant benefits for both patients and providers.
Dental
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McKinsey Report: The Rise of Health Services Technology (HST) in a Decade of Strain
What You Should Know
- A new McKinsey & Company report reveals that Health Services Technology (HST) has become the fastest-growing segment in U.S. healthcare, with EBITDA projected to exceed $110B by 2029.
- As traditional payers and providers face a "prolonged strain" on margins, they are decisively shifting investment toward AI-enabled automation and outsourcing to solve structural labor shortages and administrative complexity.
Uneven Recovery Period in Healthcare
The U.S.
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Kaiser Permanente Affiliates to Pay $556M to Settle Medicare Advantage Upcoding Allegations
What You Should Know:
- Kaiser Permanente affiliates have agreed to a $556M settlement to resolve allegations of violating the False Claims Act by submitting invalid diagnosis codes to inflate Medicare Advantage (MA) payments.
- The settlement, involving multiple Kaiser Foundation and Permanente Medical Groups, addresses a decade-long "data mining" scheme designed to pad the bottom line by manipulating the risk-adjustment model.
The Core of the Conflict: Risk Adjustment vs. Care
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The Quiet Cybersecurity Crisis in Outpatient and Post-Acute Care
News headlines tend to focus on big events. Notable examples are the attacks on Change Health and Ascension in 2024. Effects from these events continue to pop up in new cycles. However, the cybersecurity incident at the 30-bed skilled nursing facility or the ransomware attack at the 15-provider urology practice down the street that brought care to a complete halt will not be on the 5 o’clock news anywhere.
Security events like these have the same significant, long-term
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Redesigning Mental Health for a Digital Era
As healthcare systems confront rising demand for mental health services, digital therapy has emerged as one of the most scalable — and contentious — solutions. Virtual platforms promise to reduce barriers, streamline operations, and expand access. But leaders across health systems and behavioral health networks are beginning to ask more complex questions: What are the clinical limits of online care? Where are the gaps in regulation, infrastructure, and oversight? And how can digital therapy be
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Proprio Secures 4th FDA Clearance for AI-Powered ‘Picasso’ Spine Guidance
What You Should Know:
- Proprio has secured FDA clearance for Picasso, its fourth cleared capability within the Paradigm AI surgical platform.
- The feature enables "trace-based" optical registration, allowing spine surgeons to perform real-time, radiation-free 3D measurements of spinal alignment during surgery—addressing a critical gap where surgeons previously relied on static 2D X-rays or postoperative confirmation.
Radiation-Free "Digital Twins"
Legacy navigation
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How Hospital M&A Momentum Shifted to Ambulatory and Behavioral Health in 2026
What You Should Know
- Kaufman Hall has released its year-end analysis for 2025, reporting a total of 46 hospital and health system transactions. While total transacted revenue hit a historical low of $18.5 billion due to a slow start in the first half of the year, momentum surged in Q4 with 17 transactions, including four "mega mergers" where the smaller party’s annual revenue exceeded $1 billion.
- Crucially, financial distress drove a record 43.5% of all transactions, a trend
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