Emerson and Leominster hospitals are now struggling with an influx of patients as Steward's collapse and the closure of its hospitals continues to send shockwaves through already overburdened emergency departments. In September, four hospitals closest to Nashoba and Carney Hospital in Dorchester, the other closed facility, saw the largest increases in ER patients statewide compared to the same month in 2023, according to a Boston Globe analysis of statewide hospital data. Leominster hospital, which is owned by UMass Memorial Health, reported a 20% increase, more than any other hospital in Massachusetts. Brigham and Women's Faulkner Hospital, about five miles northwest of Carney, in Jamaica Plain, reported a 14% increase.
Since older adults have been more severely affected by acute COVID-19, researchers have hypothesized that older adults may have worse long COVID symptoms as well. But according to new research published in the Annals of Neurology, an official journal of the American Neurological Association, Northwestern Medicine researchers found on an average of 10 months after COVID-19 onset, younger (ages 18-44) and middle-aged (ages 45-64) adults had worse neurologic symptoms of long COVID than adults 65 and older.
In an industry overburdened by regulatory requirements and financial constraints, patient experience often takes a backseat. Many healthcare providers are caught in a cycle of reactive care, treating symptoms rather than addressing the underlying causes of inefficiency. Patients often wait weeks for essential test results, if they receive them at all.
Now that electronic health records are ubiquitous, why does every other industry still leave healthcare in the dust when it comes to personalization? Nobody knows more about us than our healthcare providers, but they don't often leverage that electronic information to help their patients — or themselves. What will it take to make healthcare at least as personalized as our Amazon product recommendations?
Electronic health records are increasingly including technology-aided predictions of how patients may respond to specific medications, known as pharmacogenomic alerts. Two Mayo Clinic Ph.D. candidates are exploring how artificial intelligence can be used to make these alerts more actionable and less intrusive for clinicians, who can suffer from alert overload.
Citing the risk of losing liability insurance, West Suburban Medical Center will no longer allow midwives and family medicine physicians to deliver babies at the hospital, abruptly severing ties with a popular group of providers effective next week.