Black surgical patients in both traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage (MA) were more likely than white patients to be readmitted to the hospital within 30 days, but for MA beneficiaries, the racial disparity was much greater.

The shift from volume to value isn’t an easy transition for healthcare, but data can make all the difference, especially for a large system which often takes in complex patients from other facilities, which was the case for Yale New Haven Health System.

A new report from the Leapfrog Group and Castlight Health found hospitals rates of pressure ulcers, or bedsores, and patient injuries steadily decreased over the past four years. However, there remained wide variation between hospitals and the majority haven’t met Leapfrog’s prevention standards on both conditions.

Black and Hispanic patients received more low-value care than whites, according to a study of Medicare data from between 2006 to 2011 published in the June 2017 issue of Health Affairs.

As mortality rates have improved overall, there have also been improvements in previously-seen racial disparities between the surgical mortality of black and white patients, with reductions occurring primarily within hospitals, rather than between hospitals.

Participating in a health information exchange (HIE) “significantly” reduced repetition of therapeutic procedures by providers in western New York, according to research conducted by the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo and the Brookings Institution. 

Patients who thought their procedures at Seattle’s Swedish Neuroscience Institute (SNI) were being performed by top surgeons, but in reality, the surgeons were often running multiple operating rooms at once without telling the patients beforehand.

The methodology for ranking the country’s best children’s hospitals in U.S. News and World Report will contain “several noteworthy changes” affecting the top 10 overall list and the rankings for pediatric cardiology and heart surgery.