Four-day workweeks, double the salary of some colleagues and no emails at night. If those perks sound like they belong to a few vaunted tech jobs, think again. Dermatologists boast some of medicine's most enviable work lives, and more aspiring doctors are vying for residency spots in the specialty.
The future of one of President Joe Biden's key domestic policy achievements — getting Medicare to negotiate drug prices — could either become part of the Biden administration's legacy, get rolled back by the incoming Congress or be weakened by President-elect Donald Trump's administration. Trump has remained relatively mum about the drug pricing provisions of the 2022 reconciliation bill and its future appears even murkier now that Republicans will control both the House and Senate. "The Trump campaign articulated no position on drug price negotiation specifically, but congressional Republicans are not fans of this program and introduced legislation to repeal the IRA in its entirety," said Juliette Cubanski, deputy director of the program on Medicare policy at KFF.
The rising escalation of aggressive behavior in healthcare workplaces became evidently clear at Geisinger after two people were killed on the rural Pennsylvania health system's properties in 2022.
What's the current state of AI in healthcare? "Deployment is King" answer the Mayo Clinic's Dr. John Halamka and Paul Cerrato. There have been very few working implementations so far of the numerous AI solutions for healthcare developed by startups and established companies. "For a solution to work within a health system, it needs to conform to specific governance protocols, integrate with its IT systems, and win the support of clinicians and administrators who will be using it on a daily basis," write Halamka and Cerrato.
Ascension Wisconsin announced plans to close a small hospital in Waukesha and consolidate and close birthing services, mental health units and cardiac catheterization labs across southeast Wisconsin. The announcement comes as other hospital systems across the state have made similar cutbacks and closures. The Saint Louis-based hospital system will close its "micro-hospital," which opened in Waukesha at the start of 2021. Ascension Wisconsin announced plans to centralize all of its inpatient behavioral healthcare services for the southeast portion of the state at St. Francis Hospital in Milwaukee, meaning it will eventually close its inpatient behavioral health units at All Saints Hospital in Racine and at Columbia St. Mary's Hospital-Ozaukee.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist and environmentalist, for years gained a loyal and fierce following with his biting condemnations of how the nation's public health agencies do business. And that's put him on a direct collision course with some of the 80,000 scientists, researchers, doctors and other officials who work for HHS, especially with President-elect Donald Trump tapping him to head the agency. If confirmed, Kennedy will control the world's largest public health agency, and its $1.7 trillion budget.