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.

Physicians have resisted stricter guidelines on early screening and treatment of sepsis, arguing there isn’t enough evidence the extra effort benefits patients—which is precisely what a new study of New York hospitals provides.

University of Michigan researchers found no association between prescribing more opioid painkillers to postoperative patients and higher pain management scores on patient satisfaction surveys, undercutting physicians’ perceptions that they’ve been incentivized to prescribe the potentially addictive drugs.  

Posting about nursing home residents on Facebook, Snapchat or other forms of social media “violates more codes than you could ever imagine,” according to the Joint Commission, which advised facilities to draft their own social media policies.