Quality and Safety
Medicare's policy now has broad support from health providers and patient groups, but neither physicians nor the American Medical Association foresee a surge in end-of-life planning among Medicare's more than 50 million enrollees.
Across the country, more than 50 rural hospitals have closed over the last six years, and another 283 are in fragile financial condition, according to the National Rural Health Association.
Americans are divided about the idea of creating a single-payer government health insurance system, as Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has proposed, but support shrinks when negative arguments are highlighted and alternatives are presented, according to a poll released Thursday.
Healthgrades, an online resource for information about physicians and hospitals, has named America's 50 and 100 Best Hospitals for 2016.
About 500,000 women give birth each year in rural hospitals, yet access to labor and delivery units has been declining. Comprehensive figures are spotty, but an analysis of 306 rural hospitals in nine states with large rural populations found that 7.2 percent closed their obstetrics units between 2010 and 2014.
Pain care for patients already taking opioids can be improved by bringing together multiple non-opioid treatment strategies during hospitalization, a new study has found.
The military's health program falls significantly short in providing mental health care to active service members, according to a RAND Corp. study published Thursday.
As superbug outbreaks raised alarm across the country last year, a prominent doctor at a Philadelphia cancer center wrote in a leading medical journal about how to reduce the risk of these often-deadly patient infections.
For the first time, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and America's Health Insurance Plans have announced standard quality measures among payers, a move designed to reduce confusion and complexity for reporting providers.
In Baltimore's poorer neighborhoods, where problems are plentiful and solutions scarce, Total Health Care strives to correct disparities in access and treatment long faced by people who struggle to get by.