Care Delivery

This channel includes news on cardiovascular care delivery, including how patients are diagnosed and treated, cardiac care guidelines, policies or legislation impacting patient care, device recalls that may impact patient care, and cardiology practice management.

UnitedHealthcare looks to reduce prior authorizations by 30% before end of 2026
The insurance arm of UnitedHealth Group said the shift is part of its ongoing effort to eliminate the barriers between care delivery and medical coverage. The full list of services exempt from prior authorizations includes diagnostic tests and many outpatient surgeries.
Blame towering market power for soaring hospital prices: Healthcare affordability specialist
“When hospitals that were once competitors merge, prices go up—often by double-digit percentages—with no measurable improvement in patient outcomes.”
5-year checkup shows ‘hospital at home’ healthy but siloed
Hospital-at-home inpatient care is no worse than its traditional counterpart at facilitating good clinical outcomes for comparable overall costs. In fact “HaH” is sometimes considerably better on both those scores.
Study: As fathers protect children, fatherhood protects dads
Becoming a father seems to make a man less likely to die young. What’s more, when a father passes away within the first five years of his child’s life, the cause is usually non-natural and thus preventable.
AHA launches three-year initiative to scale AI and telehealth adoption at hospitals
The American Hospital Association is working with the West Health Institute throughout the duration of the program, which will give health systems access to a digital platform packed full of resources to support technology upgrades.

healthcare AI and medical humanities lecture

When healthcare AI meets the medical humanities

A primary aim of medical humanities as a field today is teaching medical students how to harmonize technological innovations with care models such that patients are treated as whole persons: They have not just bodies but also minds, relationships—and lives.

Heart attack deaths are way down after decades of breakthroughs—but other risks have skyrocketed

Researchers explored more than 52 years of data, highlighting several key trends in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

artificial intelligence AI explainable ethical responsible

Healthcare AI today: Bipartisan AI policy guidance, AI claims denials, LLM brain rot, more

Federal lawmakers have a fresh resource to keep them up on healthcare AI that falls outside of formal FDA oversight. It comes in the form of a new report from the nonprofit Bipartisan Policy Center.

Why do AI-savvy consumers harbor skepticism toward medical AI?

Patients who frequently use AI tend to readily trust AI-assisted diagnoses made by their physicians. Counterintuitively, however, those who would rank themselves among the very best-informed about AI tend to mistrust such diagnoses.

EnCompass F2 device from Nevada-based EnCompass Technologies

A closer look at world’s first TAVR patient treated with new cerebral embolic protection device

The device covers three vessels at once and can be deployed through the patient's TAVR access site. Researchers shared their first-in-human experience in JACC: Case Reports.

Society of Thoracic Surgeons provides on-the-go risk evaluations with new mobile app

The STS Risk Calculator App, available on both iOS and Android devices, gives users improved access to real-time risk assessments.

heart surgery Baylor St. Luke's Medical Center

Surgeons complete first fully robotic heart transplant in US history

The historic procedure was performed in Texas on a 45-year-old patient who had been hospitalized for months with advanced heart failure.

A majority of medical devices involved in Class I recalls were never required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to undergo premarket or postmarket clinical testing, according to new research published in Annals of Internal Medicine.[1]

American College of Cardiology now supports early use of medication to treat obesity

The group highlighted the proven effectiveness of these drugs, especially semaglutide and tirzepatide, while noting that eligibility, affordability and availability will still play key roles in any treatment decisions.

Care Delivery

UnitedHealthcare looks to reduce prior authorizations by 30% before end of 2026

Blame towering market power for soaring hospital prices: Healthcare affordability specialist

5-year checkup shows ‘hospital at home’ healthy but siloed

Study: As fathers protect children, fatherhood protects dads

AHA launches three-year initiative to scale AI and telehealth adoption at hospitals