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Report shows weak hospital and health plan price transparency across 10 US markets
One of the most thorough analyses of the quality of hospital and health plan price transparency data got little attention when it was published last fall. Nonetheless, the 185-page report from the Purchaser Business Group on Health (PBGH) in Oakland, Calif., is useful for health journalists nationwide because it shows the problems employers face when…
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Hands up! What to know about palm-scanning technology
We all know the pain points of checking in for medical appointments: Manually fill out tons of paperwork, or follow multiple prompts on a tablet or check-in kiosk and scan your ID and insurance card. What if you could just walk in and hover your hand over a scanner? Palm-scanning technology — which has been…
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More hospitals will get dangerously overcrowded, researchers project
If your local hospital isn’t already packed with patients, there’s a good chance it will be in a few years. That’s the conclusion of a research letter published in JAMA Network Open that projects overall national hospital occupancy will reach an unsafe level by 2032. The paper provokes important questions that journalists can strive to…
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The latest on the harms of private equity in health care
As private equity firms continue to acquire providers, journalists must report on what we know about how they can undermine quality and access and increase costs. January was an especially prolific month on that front with three new reports — one academic and two governmental. Here are snapshots of each followed by tips to guide…
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‘Hospital, Heal Thyself:’ Book shows few hospitals adopt beneficial methods
Imagine you could help hospitals improve patient safety and boost income simply by smoothing out patient flow. That’s the idea behind the not-for-profit Institute for Healthcare Optimization (IHO) in Bedford, Mass. Now, imagine that after more than two decades of explaining how hospitals in the United States and around the world could improve operations while…
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Hospitals don’t always test AI for accuracy and bias, study says
New research published in Health Affairs indicates that hospitals often don’t assess AI models using their patient data before deploying them, potentially putting patients at risk. So-called local evaluation to check how well a predictive model performs in the unique setting of a particular hospital — as opposed to testing on a generic dataset —…
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How to overcome hospital price data reporting challenges
One of the strengths of the multi-part series, “Too big to care,” that The Guardian US published in October, was the wealth of data the reporting team used to document the problems patients and employers faced when Parkview Health raised its prices over more than 10 years. The Guardian published the first of several articles…
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