https://medicalxpress.com/hospital-medicine-news/ en-us Latest medical news and research in Hospital medicine A UVA Health emergency medicine doctor and a colleague at Clemson University have developed a framework to help hospitals integrate artificial intelligence to not only increase efficiency and cut costs but also ensure high-quality patient care remains the top priority. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-07-doctors-principles-future-ai-health.html Tue, 21 Jul 2026 12:20:03 EDT news703852141 The prevalence of health care-associated infections was lower in 2023 than in 2015 in the United States, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-07-decline-health-infections.html Mon, 20 Jul 2026 20:40:02 EDT news703748583 The strange noises, the bright lights, the unfamiliar setting, the constant busyness—these stimuli and more can take a toll on a patient's mental well-being when they're in the hospital for a physical ailment. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-07-early-intervention-rapid-response-team.html Mon, 20 Jul 2026 08:00:01 EDT news703747862 Health economics and public health experts have sought to shine a spotlight on the financialization of health care in the 21st century, but most of the literature has focused on how private equity and other financial actors are turning health care organizations like hospitals, nursing homes and physician practices into investment targets. A new paper is one of the first to systematically document how hospitals are also actively engaging in the financialization process as investors. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-07-analysis-nonprofit-hospitals-embracing-high.html Fri, 17 Jul 2026 09:20:03 EDT news703489382 The sharp fall in EU nurses joining the NHS after the Brexit referendum may have contributed to more than 1,200 additional patient deaths each year in England, according to new research led by the University of Surrey in partnership with the University of Aberdeen, Harvard Business School and Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU). https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-07-brexit-nurse-exodus-linked-extra.html Thu, 16 Jul 2026 16:40:04 EDT news703422209 Once upon a time, in Anywhere, U.S., there's a place called "Fable Hospital" where patients heal faster, staff stay longer and the building is designed to work with—not against—the people inside it. It's not a real place, but it was designed to solve a very real problem: why hospitals can be expensive to run, hard on staff and not always built for the best patient care. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-07-hospital-pays-fairy-tale.html Thu, 16 Jul 2026 08:00:01 EDT news703401061 Getting patients seen by community health teams within a day of leaving the hospital could slash emergency readmissions and emergency department visits, a new study by University of Manchester researchers suggests. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-07-home-hospital.html Thu, 16 Jul 2026 07:40:04 EDT news703400402 In the recently published article, "Primary Care, Specialists, and Hospitals: Bridging the Gaps in Communication and Coordination" in Medical Clinics of North America, Dawn M. Bravata, M.D., a research scientist at Regenstrief Institute, professor of neurology at Indiana University School of Medicine and physician at the Richard L. Roudebush VA Medical Center, explores why effective communication across primary care, specialty care and hospitals is essential to improving patient outcomes. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-07-primary-specialists-hospitals-bridging-gaps.html Fri, 10 Jul 2026 11:20:01 EDT news702899881 Medical error is one of the leading causes of death in the United States, and one organization believes those deaths can be stopped. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-07-foundation-medical-errors-year.html Thu, 09 Jul 2026 20:00:01 EDT news702814678 A new study led by the University of Sheffield and published in BMJ Open has found that up to one-third of A&E attendances and two-fifths of acute admissions could potentially be managed through same-day emergency care (SDEC) and community settings—keeping patients safe and treated without an overnight hospital stay. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-07-reveals-day-ease-nhs-emergency.html Mon, 06 Jul 2026 21:40:01 EDT news702543038 Older adults discharged from hospital with a new prescription for a sedative, especially a benzodiazepine or antipsychotic, are at increased risk of falls and other negative consequences, according to new research published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-06-hospital-discharge-sedatives-linked-falls.html Mon, 29 Jun 2026 00:00:01 EDT news701683021 Cedars-Sinai Health Sciences University investigators developed an AI-based model that can identify hospitalized patients at risk of low blood sugar up to 24 hours before the condition occurs. The long short-term memory (LSTM) model, described in npj Digital Medicine, could help clinicians intervene earlier and prevent complications, including, in severe cases, seizures, coma and long-term heart arrhythmias. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-06-hospital-ai-tool-blood-sugar.html Sat, 27 Jun 2026 10:00:03 EDT news701691207 In 2016, the government of Rwanda began using drones to bypass the country's hilly terrain and speed up the delivery of blood products to hospitals. It was an ambitious project that officials hoped would both increase the survival rate of patients in critical need of transfusions and help hospitals better manage their valuable inventory of blood products. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-06-rwanda-drones-health.html Thu, 25 Jun 2026 20:20:04 EDT news701604703 On a busy hospital ward, a nurse says "wonderful, wonderful" as a patient with dementia completes a task. It sounds simple, but moments like this can play an important role in how care gets done. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-06-dementia.html Wed, 24 Jun 2026 23:00:01 EDT news701525876 Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have analyzed nearly 86,500 surgeries at Baystate Medical Center to identify the top factors that influence inefficiencies in surgeon schedules. Having an efficiently organized surgical schedule has the potential to lower costs and reduce surgeon burnout, which would also improve patient outcomes. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-06-surgeons-factors-hospital-efficiency.html Wed, 24 Jun 2026 13:40:05 EDT news701525401 Tired of watching its employers struggle to afford the cost of health care, Republican-controlled Indiana is trying a traditionally liberal tactic to control costs: setting government price controls on hospitals. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-06-indiana-powerful-hospitals-capping-prices.html Tue, 23 Jun 2026 23:20:01 EDT news701418984 At least 12% of Americans now communicate with their health care providers about appointments, test results and ongoing treatments via secure online patient portals and health apps, a new study shows. Meanwhile, traditional in-person visits to the doctor's office have rebounded since the pandemic. Although digital medicine has become a routine part of health care, it is supplementing rather than replacing in-person care. This evolution, researchers say, is reshaping how hospitals and clinics operate daily. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-06-digital-health-tools-reshaping-states.html Mon, 22 Jun 2026 11:00:01 EDT news701017202 Two independent AI models that can assist with multiple stages of patient management, from diagnosis to treatment decisions, are presented in Nature this week. The systems—MIRA (Medical Intelligence for Reasoning and Action) and Google's AMIE (Articulate Medical Intelligence Explorer)—perform at least as well as physicians, demonstrating the potential for conversational AI tools to help with disease management. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-06-medical-ais-diagnosis-treatment-decisions.html Thu, 18 Jun 2026 12:20:10 EDT news700999727 Researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine found caregivers of children hospitalized for cancer and blood disorders may experience food insecurity during their child's stay, even if they don't face that issue at home, and it could be linked to longer stays. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-06-caregivers-children-hospitalized-cancer-blood.html Thu, 18 Jun 2026 09:20:01 EDT news700992722 Helping hospitalized patients begin treatment for opioid use disorder may improve outcomes at a reasonable financial cost, according to a study co-led by investigators at Cedars-Sinai Health Sciences University. The analysis, published in JAMA Network Open, suggests the hospital-based addiction consultation service known as START (Substance Use Treatment and Recovery Team) is cost-effective and clinically effective, based on findings from a prior randomized trial. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-06-hospital-addiction-outcomes.html Mon, 15 Jun 2026 08:40:01 EDT news700730521 Remote monitoring isn't a panacea for reducing readmissions across all conditions—and for some patients, clinicians should proceed with caution, clinical trial results published in JAMA Network Open suggest. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-06-remote-readmissions-sepsis-trial.html Thu, 11 Jun 2026 10:30:01 EDT news700302841 Every day, across thousands of American hospitals, artificial intelligence quietly shapes decisions that determine patient outcomes. An algorithm flags a patient as high risk for sepsis; a risk score informs whether a woman receives additional cancer screening; a deterioration model triggers an alert that sends a care team to a bedside. These tools are embedded in the workflows of nearly two-thirds of U.S. hospitals, integrated into the electronic health record systems clinicians rely on daily. But many have never been reviewed by the FDA. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-06-ai-tools-patient-regulatory-oversight.html Wed, 10 Jun 2026 22:00:03 EDT news700327261 About a year ago at Erlanger Baroness, the largest hospital in Chattanooga, anesthesia staff noticed that a nurse was slurring his words and struggling to stay awake while on duty in the surgery center, according to a Tennessee Board of Nursing consent order. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-06-tennessee-hospital-nurse-stole-fentanyl.html Tue, 09 Jun 2026 23:20:01 EDT news700212720 The hospital discharge summary—a document that outlines a patient's hospital stay for their outpatient providers—can take up a lot of doctors' time. It needs to comprehensively and succinctly summarize days, sometimes weeks, of medical details. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-06-ai-ease-burden-hospital-discharge.html Tue, 09 Jun 2026 18:00:03 EDT news700242301 Just over a decade ago, Michigan expanded its Medicaid health coverage program, opening it to all adults with very low incomes through the Healthy Michigan Plan (HMP). https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-06-michigan-medicaid-expansion-uninsurance-debt.html Tue, 09 Jun 2026 17:40:06 EDT news700232200 You go to the hospital for treatment and to get better. But sometimes, you get something much less welcome: an infection. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-06-teeth-hospital-chance-pneumonia.html Tue, 09 Jun 2026 13:00:09 EDT news700225928 Dementia makes most things in life more difficult, including hospital care. Though often essential for patients with severe acute illness, hospital care can be confusing for persons with dementia (PWD). Compared with older adults without dementia, PWD in the United States visit the emergency room and are hospitalized at higher rates. In these cases, the decision on a hospital stay requires a delicate balance between the potential benefits and risks of hospital care. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-06-hospital-admission-affects-persons-dementia.html Mon, 08 Jun 2026 17:00:04 EDT news700148630 A Concordia-led research team has developed a planning tool that could help hospitals book their operating rooms more efficiently, shorten wait times and better cope with last‑minute emergencies. The researchers developed their model using artificial intelligence tools to plan which operating rooms to open on each day, when each surgery should start and which cases may need to be delayed, all in a single, integrated framework. Their model uses far fewer variables than a widely used previous approach, making it faster and more practical for real hospital conditions, especially when dealing with dozens or even hundreds of operations in a week. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-06-tool-hospitals-surgical.html Thu, 04 Jun 2026 17:40:03 EDT news699805081 Virtual wards, also known as hospital at home, are increasingly being used across the NHS to support people who would otherwise need hospital care to receive treatment and monitoring at home. A new study led by University of Manchester researchers explored how safe care is delivered in virtual wards, highlighting the often unseen work carried out by patients and caregivers as they undertake key elements of risk-work previously held by clinicians. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-06-safety-nhs-virtual-wards.html Wed, 03 Jun 2026 10:00:06 EDT news699698462 Telemedicine, continuous monitoring and remote procedures are becoming increasingly important in medicine. For these to operate seamlessly in everyday clinical practice, data must be transmitted quickly, reliably and without interruption. Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and TUM University Hospital have investigated how future 6G networks can manage computing power and data transmission so that up to 40% more applications can be run simultaneously. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-06-6g-networks-network-telemedicine.html Tue, 02 Jun 2026 11:20:04 EDT news699613885