Healthcare is moving toward models that reward outcomes, continuity, and population health management, yet disparities in access to specialized care continue to persist. And while community hospitals are central to closing this gap, they are being inundated with technologies that promise to transform care yet are structurally difficult to translate from large academic medical centers to smaller ones.
Rural hospitals operate with lower patient volumes and thinner margins, practical
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Health IT & Digital Health-Opinion | Op-Eds | Guest Columns | Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
Rural Hospitals Are Collapsing Under Administrative Burden That AI Alone Cannot Solve
More than 180 rural hospitals in the United States have closed since 2005, according to the Chartis Center for Rural Health, while providers spend over $25 billion annually on claims adjudication, with nearly $18 billion of that tied to claims that are ultimately paid, according to Premier Inc.
That’s not a demand problem. It’s an administrative one. And increasingly, it’s a technology infrastructure problem tied to how work is managed, measured, and automated.
And for rural hospitals
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Shifting the Interoperability Axis: Why Layered Extensions Fail Modern Hospital Core EHRs
Every year, there are roughly 33.5 million hospital admissions, 155 million emergency department visits, and hundreds of millions of outpatient encounters across the United States. At the same time, healthcare spending has reached $4.9 trillion annually. When patient data, especially for such a large number of healthcare consumers, is fragmented across multiple applications, vendors, and systems, the effect is exponential. It is multiplied across every encounter, every workflow, and every
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How the REAL Health Providers Act Will Eradicate “Ghost Networks”
The proposed Requiring Enhanced and Accurate Lists (REAL) Health Providers Act—also referred to as the RHP Act—recently signed and expected to take effect for plan year 2028, represents a significant shift in how healthcare providers are regulated, credentialed, and represented to Medicare Advantage members.
The proposed requirements aim to provide health plan members with greater transparency, accessibility, and accuracy within provider directories in their member portals. Payers will need
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If the Data Center Goes Down, Patient Care Goes with It
Healthcare organizations have spent years modernizing clinical technology. All of it depends on one thing: the data center staying online. Here’s what resilient healthcare infrastructure actually looks like.
Healthcare IT leaders have spent years modernizing their infrastructure: migrating to electronic health records, deploying telehealth platforms, integrating remote monitoring devices, connecting imaging systems to clinical workflows, and more. The investment has been substantial, and the
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Turning AI Into Real Support for Skilled Nursing Teams
Artificial intelligence is no longer a distant concept in skilled nursing. It shows up in daily workflows, from documentation support and predictive insights to workforce planning and quality management. The real question facing skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) is no longer whether AI will play a role, but how to implement it in a way that genuinely supports frontline teams and improves resident outcomes.
Recent conversations with operators, clinical leaders, and technology executives have
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When Rural Maternity Care Fails: Why Bipartisan Policy Must Stabilize Obstetric Infrastructure
More than one-third of U.S. counties are now considered maternity care deserts. In 2023, the national maternal mortality rate hit 18.6 deaths per 100,000 live births. For Black women, that climbs to 50.3 deaths per 100,000, more than double the national average.
What we're missing is policy alignment, sustainable funding, and important culture changes that align maternal care teams beyond the current boundaries of what high quality and reliable maternal care looks like. And we can’t
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Building Bridges: Academic-Practice Partnerships as the Future of New Graduate Nurse Preparedness
Building Bridges: Academic-Practice Partnerships as the Future of New Graduate Nurse Preparedness
The nursing workforce is at an inflection point. As experienced nurses retire or leave the profession and care delivery continues to shift in complexity, health systems are increasingly dependent on new graduate nurses to sustain operations, ensure patient safety, and deliver high‑quality care. Many organizations are finding that today’s graduates are entering practice underprepared for the
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Vocal Biomarkers: Helping Clinicians Detect What Patients Hesitate to Share
Five years into caring for a patient, a primary care physician saw her again shortly after she delivered her first child. The visit was scheduled as a routine six-week newborn evaluation. As is common in primary care, the encounter extended beyond the infant to include the mother’s well-being.
During the appointment, the new mother appeared upbeat. “I’m doing great — it’s such a joy to have my baby at home and to be through the process of pregnancy,” she said. On the surface, there were no
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The Next AI Use Case in Radiology Isn’t Diagnosis. It’s Patient Understanding
For years, the debate around AI in radiology has been framed in the biggest possible terms. Will it replace radiologists? Will it outperform specialists? Will it make diagnostic imaging faster, cheaper, and more accurate?
Those questions matter. But they can distract from a more immediate and practical opportunity. The first truly scalable use of AI in imaging may not be autonomous diagnosis. It may be helping patients understand the imaging information they already receive.
That is a
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