Patient aggression in the hospital is a growing problem. Among nurses and other staff, violent or abusive behaviors have been linked to burnout and PTSD — two of the many reasons nurses have left the medical profession in recent years by the thousands. Preventing aggressive behavior before it can begin is perhaps the most effective, and elusive, strategy for reversing the trend.
Here’s a closer look at the problem
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Health IT & Digital Health-Opinion | Op-Eds | Guest Columns | Analysis, Insights - HIT Consultant
Retail Pharmacy 2026 Forecast: From “Hard Truths” to AI-Driven Innovation
2025 has been a year of hard truths for retail pharmacy.
Persistent reimbursement pressures, escalating fees, workforce shortages and policy whiplash have forced many operators to rethink how they serve patients and sustain their businesses. Expanding into clinical services and stepping into the role of frontline healthcare providers is becoming an expectation, not an option. Direct-to-payer contracting is no longer experimental.
But perhaps the most palpable change for
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5 Ways AI Can Go Beyond Optimization in Healthcare Marketing in 2026
Artificial intelligence (AI) has already proven its worth in healthcare marketing by optimizing campaigns—refining targeting, improving efficiency, and reducing waste. But optimization is only the beginning. Its real value lies in creating tangible advantages—extending human capabilities, enabling precision at the point of care, simplifying complex compliance requirements, and bridging the gap between treatment and access. Here are five ways AI can and should transform healthcare marketing
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Prenatal Compliance: Solving SDOH Needs Builds Trust with Moms
Pregnancy is one of the most-expensive episodes for insurers, averaging about $19,000 for pregnancy, vaginal delivery and postpartum care, and $26,000 for cesarean births. Compared with other industrialized nations, costs in the U.S. are nearly eight times higher.
And what do mothers in the U.S. get in return for this high-priced care? They get the highest death rate per 100,000 live births in the developed world, with 18.6 deaths recorded in 2022, compared with 5.5 deaths per 100,000 in the
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The Invisible Gap: Why Oncology EHRs Must Measure Emotional Recovery
In oncology care the clinical community has made remarkable progress in extending survival. Yet we face a persistent invisible gap in care: the emotional and cognitive recovery of patients after treatment ends. Emotional distress in cancer survivors such as anxiety, depression, and pain is not only common but also has measurable impacts on utilization, adherence, and quality of life. The next frontier in digital health is to treat this recovery as a data-driven outcome by embedding it into the
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Denial Management: Closing Gaps and Reducing Revenue Leakage
Revenue leakage on the front end and mid-cycle is an ongoing challenge for hospitals and health systems. Rather than taking a reactive approach to the problem, proactively collaborating among teams prior to admission helps providers avoid playing the blame game when their claims are denied after the fact.
By focusing on reducing the number of denials before a claim is submitted, rather than trying to eliminate denials after the fact, revenue cycle managers can save time and energy. Today’s AI
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The Many Hats of Health IT: Why Lifelong Learning Is No Longer Optional
The digital transformation sweeping across healthcare is reshaping not only patient care and administrative workflows, but also the skill sets demanded of IT professionals in the sector. Health IT practitioners are expected to wear many hats today: software developer, data scientist, cybersecurity analyst, cloud architect, and increasingly, AI integration specialist.
With hospitals and healthcare organizations relying on increasingly complex technology infrastructures to maintain compliance,
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Fragile Lifelines: How AI Can Reinforce Pharma Supply Chains
Drug shortages have surged to their highest levels in decades. In early 2024, U.S. pharmacies reported more than 323 active shortages, spanning essential generics, injectables, and even critical cancer therapies. These numbers echo findings from the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, which tracks persistent disruptions that ripple through hospitals, pharmacies, and ultimately to patients in urgent need of care.
While the pandemic made those cracks impossible to ignore, the reality
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The Compliance Blind Spot: Why Traditional Backups Fail HIPAA Integrity Standards
Healthcare organizations face a uniquely challenging compliance landscape. HIPAA requirements mandate robust data protection and breach notification protocols, while simultaneously, the sector has become the most targeted industry for ransomware attacks. There is now a growing gap between what compliance frameworks require and what traditional security measures can realistically deliver.
The stakes extend beyond regulatory fines. When ransomware strikes a hospital system, the consequences
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The Healthcare Balancing Act: How AI, RPM, and Predictive Analytics Cut Costs Without Sacrificing Care
Calling healthcare a balancing act is probably not doing it justice: Costs are rising, reimbursements are dwindling, and Medicaid is under the knife, but health organizations are still tasked with providing the highest quality of care to the most people they can without breaking the bank.
Under unprecedented financial strain, providers and payers need to optimize operations and trim the budget wherever they can, but never at the expense of quality patient care. That’s why many are investing
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