Bleeping Computer: Florida hospital takes IT systems offline after cyberattack. “Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare (TMH) has taken its IT systems offline and suspended non-emergency procedures following a late Thursday cyberattack. While all its network systems were taken online, TMH says this attack only impacted some of them.”
CNN: Brooklyn hospital network reverts to paper charts for weeks after cyberattack. “A network of three hospitals in Brooklyn, New York, has had to work off paper charts for weeks following a cyberattack on its computer systems in late November, the hospital group’s chief executive told CNN Monday.”
Penn Medicine: Penn Medicine Study Finds Automated Texts Decrease Odds of Rehospitalization. “…researchers saw a significant decrease in hospital readmission among patients who received automated check-in text messages from their primary care team. Specifically, the researchers found a 55 percent decline in the likelihood that these patients would need to stay at the hospital again in the next month, and a 41 percent reduction in the odds that they would need emergency care of any kind over the next 30 days.”
ITV: Southampton General Hospital clarifies it is ‘very much open’ after Google said it was closed. “A major hospital has been forced to clarify that it is ‘very much open’ after it was flagged as temporarily closed by Google Maps. Southampton General Hospital, which is one of the busiest in the South, deals with emergency and critical care as well as acute medicine and operates a dedicated eye casualty.”
Houston Chronicle: St. Luke’s Health record system is still offline a week after ransomware attack at parent company. “A cyber attack against a major U.S. nonprofit health system has snarled patient services for more than a week at six St. Luke’s Health hospitals in Houston, where online records systems have been shut down and doctors have resorted to cumbersome backup options.”
Bleeping Computer: Meta, US hospitals sued for using healthcare data to target ads. “A class action lawsuit has been filed in the Northern District of California against Meta (Facebook), the UCSF Medical Center, and the Dignity Health Medical Foundation, alleging that the organizations are unlawfully collecting sensitive healthcare data about patients for targeted advertising.”
WHSV: VHHA rolls out healthcare cost transparency tool. “The Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association rolled out a new tool that helps patients understand healthcare costs, as well as financial assistance policies, available here. It is meant to help prepare for what procedures may cost. You select your hospital and the portal takes you to their website, where you can input your procedure and see what that costs. Depending on the hospital system, you may be asked for insurance information so they can take that into account as well.”
Enfield Independent: London hospitals launched website to help donate urgent supplies to Ukraine. “People are being invited to visit the new website and purchase items that will then be packaged and dispatched to the war-torn country. Medical supplies needed in Ukraine include ventilators, crutches, walking frames, respiratory masks, scrubs, bandages and wound kits.”
NBC News: Hospitals are required to post prices for common procedures. Few do.. “The Hospital Price Transparency Law is intended to make the hidden costs of services such as X-rays, medical tests or colonoscopies clear to patients before they enter the hospital. But a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association added to mounting evidence that hospitals are largely ignoring the law.”
Associated Press: Wray: FBI blocked planned cyberattack on children’s hospital. “The FBI thwarted a planned cyberattack on a children’s hospital in Boston that was to have been carried out by hackers sponsored by the Iranian government, FBI Director Christopher Wray said Wednesday.”
PR Newswire: Employers’ Forum of Indiana Introduces Sage Transparency, Built Using New RAND Hospital Price Study (PRESS RELEASE). “Using data from the upcoming RAND 4.0 Hospital Price Transparency Study, Employers’ Forum of Indiana today launched Sage Transparency, a publicly accessible and customizable dashboard to demonstrate hospital value…. Sage Transparency is a free-to-use, customizable dashboard which allows the user to compare metrics of hospital price and quality across states, health systems, and facilities.” The fact that Employers’ Forum of Indiana did it makes you think it might be Indiana-only, but I was able to look up hospital information all over America.
CMS: HHS Releases New Data and Report on Hospital and Nursing Home Ownership. “The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is releasing data publicly — for the first time — on mergers, acquisitions, consolidations, and changes of ownership from 2016-2022 for hospitals and nursing homes enrolled in Medicare…. HHS’s Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) is also releasing a related report — an analysis of the new CMS data examining trends in changes of ownership over the past six years.”
PR Newswire: Understanding Hospital Costs– New Tool Makes Data More Transparent and Accessible (PRESS RELEASE). “The [Hospital Cost Tool] identifies different cost measures including hospital revenue, cost to charge ratios, and profitability across more than 4,600 hospitals nationwide from 2011 through 2019. It is interactive, allowing users to examine data for an individual hospital or specific health system, by state or users can compare data across hospitals and states. The tool is based on NASHP’s Hospital Cost Calculator that uses Medicare Cost Report data annually submitted to the federal government by hospitals. Data for 2020 will be added to the tool after more hospitals have completed their reports for that year.”
San Francisco Chronicle: Here’s why hospital nurses, the pandemic’s ‘health care heroes,’ are so ticked off. ” Understaffing at Bay Area hospitals predates the pandemic, but two years of COVID-19 have made it worse. All told, hospitals in California are short the equivalent of more than 40,000 full-time nurses, a UCSF study reported in August. That’s almost 14% fewer than needed, a shortage the researchers expect to last until 2026 when enough nursing students graduate to match pre-COVID levels. Older nurses are leaving the profession faster than new ones can begin, and many in mid-career say they can’t wait to leave, the study found.”
Politico: Some hospitals ask patients, visitors to remove N95s, citing CDC. “They fear that surgical masks put the most vulnerable people at higher risk of catching Covid-19. N95s, which seal tighter to the face, offer better protection against the airborne virus, studies show. For more than a year, many have called on the Biden administration to change its guidance to offer more protection inside hospitals, even as mitigation measures have been dialed back and case counts decline. And yet, patients across the country say they are often told to replace their N95s with surgical masks as they enter hospitals.”
