In a letter to CMS, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, asked what legal barriers are standing in the way of the agency making hospital inspections done by private accrediting organizations public, reigniting debate over a regulatory change hospitals strongly opposed earlier this year.

Penalizing hospitals if patients are readmitted shortly after being discharged has appeared to work in change facilities' approach to care, according to WUNC’s look at several hospitals in the Triangle region of North Carolina.

Only a handful of healthcare markets have been given high star ratings by CMS across four different sectors, according to a study published in The BMJ, suggesting either high-quality care at one facility isn’t “dependent on or improves” quality in another or the ratings themselves are flawed.

Eight residents of the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills in Hollywood, Florida, died Sept. 13, supposedly of heat-related causes. The facility had a history of problems with its generator and its owner was once implicated in a $15 million healthcare fraud case.

At least 35 Florida hospitals closed ahead of Hurricane Irma hitting the state last weekend, with dozens more still operating on backup power as recovery efforts continue.

Most physicians think overtreatment is common in the U.S., according to study published in PLOS One, believing 20.6 percent of all medical care was unnecessary, including 22 percent of prescriptions, 24.9 percent of tests and 11.1 percent of procedures.

Several Florida hospitals which sit in the path Hurricane Irma is expected to take this weekend have begun evacuating patients, while others will remain open during the storm and only postpone elective procedures.

Beaumont Baptist Hospital, located about 85 miles away from Houston, was one of a few facilities in the region that decided to evacuate patients due to Hurricane Harvey. But moving 243 injured and ill patients—including one with a broken pelvis—isn’t so easy, as the New York Times chronicled.