By Phil Galewitz – With the federal shutdown continuing, spurred by a stalemate over the cost of health insurance for 22 million Americans on Affordable Care Act plans, a new report shows that over 154 million people with coverage through an employer also face steep price hikes — and that the situation is likely to get worse.
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By Ellie Gabel – Power disruptions can instantly derail operations in digitally integrated hospitals. Modern health care relies on a complex network of connected medical devices, cloud-based data systems and analytics-driven workflows that demand constant power. Even short outages can interrupt surgeries, disable monitoring systems and compromise patient outcomes.
By Kathryn Ayers Wickenhauser – The theme of “Empower. Evolve. Impact.” could not have been more fitting, as the conversations throughout the conference centered on the evolving influence of Health Information professionals in shaping interoperability, privacy, and data integrity.
By Usman Choudhary – Email is the connective tissue of modern healthcare. From appointment confirmations to lab reports, care coordination notes to claims documentation, it is woven into nearly every clinical and administrative workflow.
By Zac Amos – Hospitals run on email, shared portals and ticket queues. Attackers now use generative artificial intelligence to send convincing messages that mimic colleagues, patients, payers or IT to push rushed logins. Language errors used to give such scams away, but AI reduces those tells and scales personalization across thousands of targets.
By Devin Partida – Patient messaging is an essential component of coordinating care. Doctors want fast channels to answer questions and share instructions, while patients want the same simplicity and convenience they experience with the apps they use every day.
By Heather Randall PhD – In the digital healthcare space, every third-party vendor you work with introduces some form of risk. Providers depend on billing partners, claims processors, payment platforms, and countless others to keep operations running. That interconnectedness drives efficiency, but it also creates exposure.
This year the Civitas Annual Conference took place in September in Anaheim, California, with 211 San Diego/CIE as the premier partner, and InterSystems as the Platinum Sponsor. We rounded up some reflections on the event.
By Leigh Burchell – Artificial intelligence presents the potential to rapidly reshape healthcare, offering opportunities to assist clinicians, empower patients, streamline operations and reduce system costs. Yet, as this transformative potential expands, so does interest in—and in some cases, concern about—the use of AI among lawmakers and regulators.