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Hospital medicine news
Pulse oximeter bias linked to gaps in care for Black patients
Pulse oximeter devices routinely overestimate blood oxygen levels in darker-skinned patients—a racial bias that can trigger downstream health harms for Black individuals, compounding well beyond any single inaccurate reading.
May 25, 2026
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Study finds outcomes for lung conditions worse at private equity-owned hospitals
A large study presented at the 2026 ATS International Conference shows that patients treated for COPD or pneumonia experience worse outcomes across several important measures when they are treated at hospitals that have been ...
May 19, 2026
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Medications initiated in 30% of hospitalizations for alcohol use disorder among Veterans
Within the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), 30% of hospitalizations for alcohol use disorder (AUD) result in medications for AUD (MAUD) initiation as an inpatient or within seven days of discharge, according to a study ...
May 14, 2026
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Restructured public hospitals kept more elderly patients local with fewer beds
Despite their crucial function, public hospitals often face limited resources and financial distress, and an aging population can further exacerbate any imbalances in medical resource distribution. Furthermore, the proportion ...
May 14, 2026
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Addiction experts develop best practices for treating opioid use disorder in the hospital
A new study published in JAMA Network Open on May 7, 2026, engaged 42 national experts in hospital-based addiction treatment in a consensus-building process to develop best practices for hospital-initiated medications for ...
May 12, 2026
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The UK's NHS surgery backlogs can't be fixed by hiring alone, study warns
Researchers from some of the UK's leading academic institutions have warned that simply hiring more National Health service (NHS) staff will not be enough to reduce surgery backlogs, in research published in the Journal of ...
May 12, 2026
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FDA approves early warning system for sepsis
An early warning system for sepsis, one of the deadliest infections for hospital patients, has been approved for use by the FDA, one of the first AI-based medical tools to get clearance. The tool, developed by Johns Hopkins ...
May 12, 2026
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AI language models struggle with basic hospital data tasks, study finds
A new study finds that large language models (LLMs), used with straightforward prompting, perform poorly on routine number-crunching tasks that hospital administrators depend on every day to track patients and allocate resources. ...
May 7, 2026
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States eye aid to prop up distressed hospitals amid federal Medicaid cuts
At Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Hospital, just outside Los Angeles, patients on gurneys line the hallways of the emergency department waiting for care, and overflow mental health patients are consigned to outdoor tents.
May 7, 2026
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From NICU decisions to hospital systems: Where analytics investments deliver life-saving value
Hospital care teams make decisions that can have life-or-death consequences, and they do it as quickly as possible with information that's often incomplete. While spending several months in a neonatal intensive care unit, ...
May 7, 2026
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A safe staffing policy for Pennsylvania could prevent deaths and produce savings to help fund improved staffing
A new study led by researchers from Penn Nursing's Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research (CHOPR) finds that safer nurse staffing levels in Pennsylvania hospitals could prevent thousands of deaths each year while ...
May 5, 2026
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Nonprofit hospitals spend billions on management consultants... with no clear effect
In recent decades, management consulting firms have become a fixture in the American health care system, wielding outsized influence compared to most other economic sectors. Hospitals navigating challenging financial and ...
May 4, 2026
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Novel in-hospital screening method detects cognitive issues
More than 40% of older people admitted to U.S. hospitals have dementia, yet only half of them have been diagnosed with memory and cognitive difficulty. Cedars-Sinai Health Sciences University investigators have developed ...
May 4, 2026
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Study finds regional differences in sickle cell disease in New York state
Sickle cell disease (SCD) is the most common inherited blood disorder in the United States. Approximately 10% of people with SCD in the US live in New York State, with the majority residing in New York City.
May 1, 2026
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AI surpasses physicians on clinical reasoning tasks, raising the bar for more serious testing
In one of the largest studies to compare artificial intelligence and physicians on a wide array of clinical reasoning tasks including real emergency department data, a team of physicians and computer scientists at Harvard ...
Apr 30, 2026
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Can virtual mirrors fix hospital patient bottlenecks?
An article titled "How Digital Twins Can Improve Health System Operations," written by Mark Crawford, explores how virtual replicas of entire hospital ecosystems are allowing administrators to test high-risk operational changes ...
Apr 28, 2026
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Study reveals that 13,000 patients waited over three days in England's emergency departments last year
Exclusive data published in The BMJ today show that 13,386 patients in England waited at least three days for A&E (accident and emergency) treatment last year, part of almost 500,000 who spent over 24 hours stuck in NHS emergency ...
Apr 22, 2026
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Are your staffing metrics enough? New research on patient falls says maybe not
A new study from Penn Nursing's Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research (CHOPR) published in Nursing Outlook finds that nurses' assessments of their staffing adequacy is a more accurate predictor of patient safety ...
Apr 21, 2026
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Silence in health care still kills: Communication failures continue to threaten patients and health care innovation
Cultures of silence among health care professionals remain a significant threat to patients and health care innovation, according to results from a national survey of more than 3,500 clinicians and health care administrators.
Apr 21, 2026
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Remote monitoring may improve hospital overcrowding
A new featured report details how advances in remote monitoring and portable medical technology are dismantling the traditional hospital walls. The article, "Hospital-at-Home: New Technology Brings Acute Care to Patients' ...
Apr 21, 2026
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Hospital delirium a 'red flag' for severe health decline
A single episode of delirium—a state of confusion and agitation—in hospitalized older adults is a significant risk factor for other serious health complications including fractures, stroke and sepsis, a University of Queensland ...
Apr 14, 2026
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AI remains lacking in clinical reasoning abilities, according to study of 21 large language models
Despite increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in health care, a new study led by Mass General Brigham researchers from the MESH Incubator shows that generative AI models continue to fall short in their clinical reasoning ...
Apr 13, 2026
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After hospital discharge: What a 30-day trial suggests about pharmacist follow-up for seniors
Older hospitalized patients who struggled with taking their medications correctly were 10% less likely to need to return to the hospital if they had a pharmacist's help at discharge, according to a new multisite clinical ...
Apr 6, 2026
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How disinfectants influence microbes across hospital rooms
Just because a topical antiseptic is swabbed on the skin doesn't mean it stays on the skin. In a new study, Northwestern University scientists studied how a powerful antiseptic, called chlorhexidine, affects bacteria in hospital ...
Apr 2, 2026
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