Meadows Regional Medical Center in Vidalia, Georgia, serves a “very rural” area, according to president and CEO Alan Kent, DHA, just the kind of facility that has often been scooped up by larger systems in recent years. Staying independent meant the hospital needed to drive through a series of management-led initiatives on quality, patient growth and staffing levels.

In a survey of 232 chief nursing officers (CNOs) by AMN Healthcare, the vast majority said they’re experiencing at least a moderate shortage of nurses at their organizations—and 61 percent expected it would only get worse in the next five years.

In a final rule that CMS said would help customers “suffering from high Obamacare premiums,” the agency’s 2019 rule for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchanges would give states more power on how plans cover required benefits and widen exemptions to the law’s individual mandate in the final year customers can be penalized for not having ACA-compliant insurance.

The utilization of telehealth by older patients is linked to perceived privacy and security, performance and effort expectancy, according to a study published April 4 in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.

Healthcare cybersecurity insurance claims in 2017 made up 17 percent of total claims—but accounted for 28 percent of costs related to breaches, roughly $65 million of a total $229 million, according to the 2017 Cyber Claims Study by NetDiligence.

Online message boards giving medical advice about implanted cardiac defibrillators (ICDs) are only accurate about half the time, according to research set to be presented at the American Heart Association's Quality of Care and Outcomes Research Scientific Sessions 2018.

Insurance companies are beginning to decide what they’ll charge and whether to participate on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchanges for 2019, with Matt Eyles, the next CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), saying it’s “not a pretty picture right now” for individual market insurers.

The American Medical Association has joined with Google to kick off a contest to collect ideas of novel approaches to improving mobile health technology, including wearables and smartphone apps, to improve the flow of information between patients and physicians. The goal is to streamline technology to improve management of chronic diseases.

Omni MedSci, a healthcare technology startup, has filed a lawsuit against Apple claiming the company infringed four patents in developing the Apple Watch’s heart rate sensor.

For all the attention given to forays from Amazon, Apple and Walmart into the healthcare space, traditional providers are more worried about the continued expansion of UnitedHealthGroup’s Optum into clinical care, according to an article in Bloomberg.