News

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center is urging hospitals and other critical infrastructure to take immediate action to patch and harden network systems to protect against a significant ransomware threat, the “Citrix Bleed” vulnerability.

To support and advance those efforts, the AHA recently launched a new Patient Safety Initiative that seeks to energize all the work already underway and reaffirm hospital and health system leadership and commitment to patient safety.

In response to stakeholder feedback, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has extended through Dec. 14 the application deadline for the Making Care Primary Model, a new value-based payment model beginning next July in Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, upstate New York, North Carolina and Washington.

AHA Executive Vice President Michelle Hood previews the AHA Rural Health Care Leadership Conference — one of AHA's flagship events — which will be held Feb. 11-14 in Orlando, Fla.

The AHA Nov. 30 announced that Melinda (Mindy) Hatton, AHA’s general counsel and secretary, will retire after a long and distinguished career in the association and legal world.

“A recent Modern Healthcare article misleadingly suggests that hospitals and health systems provided less charity care between 2020 and 2023,” writes AHA General Counsel and Secretary Mindy Hatton.

The departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and the Treasury will give health care providers and insurers initiating a payment dispute through Jan. 16 under the No Surprises Act’s Independent Dispute Resolution process 10 business days to select a certified IDR entity after initiating the dispute, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced Nov 29. 

Cyber actors attacking the Okta Help Center customer support management system in October downloaded a report containing the names and email addresses of all system users, and could use this inform

Hear from three experts who believe that expanding and integrating the talent pool of community health workers into America's hospitals and health systems could provide a bridge to meeting future health care needs.

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, U.K. National Cyber Security Centre and other global partners this week released recommended guidelines or secure artificial intelligence design, development, deployment and use.

The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health Nov. 29 held a hearing  to explore how medical devices and hospitals are using artificial intelligence and what Congress should consider as AI in health care evolves. 

The AHA and seven other national organizations representing hospitals Nov. 29 voiced strong support for a Medicaid managed care proposal to establish the Average Commercial Rate as the upper payment limit for inpatient and outpatient hospital services in the context of state directed payments, but urged the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services not to move forward with proposed restrictions on states’ use of provider-based funding sources such as provider taxes to finance Medicaid payments.

A bipartisan group of House members Nov. 28 introduced AHA-supported legislation that would prohibit health insurers from charging fees for standard electronic fund transfers to pay health care providers for services.

The AHA’s American Society for Health Care Engineering recently received a MarCom Gold Award for excellence in marketing and communication for its Health Care Facilities Innovation Conference, the new name and brand for its annual conference.

AHA’s latest social media toolkit for encouraging vaccination against the flu and COVID-19 focuses on handwashing and winter- and family-themed messages.

In the latest episode in AHA’s three-part series on maternal health, Tiffany Moore Simas, M.D., chair of obstetrics and gynecology at UMass Memorial, discusses the concerning prevalence of perinatal depression, and the options available to provide moms with a lifeline.

Health Services Research, the flagship publication of AHA’s Health Research & Educational Trust, Nov. 28 released with support from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality a special edition focused on health equity.

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute Nov. 28 awarded $80.5 million to support comparative clinical effectiveness studies on the health care and social factors that contribute to inequities in maternal morbidity and mortality.

In response to recent court decisions that set aside certain regulations implementing the No Surprises Act’s Independent Dispute Resolution process, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Nov. 28 released FAQs explaining how certified IDR entities may determine whether a dispute is appropriately batched and clarifying certain other provisions and its policy for extending existing IDR deadlines once the federal IDR portal reopens to all batched disputes and single disputes involving air ambulance services.

Nearly 4.6 million people selected a 2024 health plan through the federally facilitated and state-based marketplaces Nov. 1-18, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services reported last week.