AHA Stat Blog

Latest

by Rick Pollack
A COVID-19 vaccine is likely coming soon. Whether it’s next month, at the end of the year or in early 2021, many scientific experts believe we will have one or more safe and effective vaccines to combat the deadly virus.
by Erika Rogan
While work is underway on new payment and delivery models for rural hospitals, additional, targeted actions by Congress and the Trump administration are needed to support these hospitals and their communities, writes Erika Rogan, AHA senior associate director of policy. Rogan says listening to rural hospitals’ concerns and ideas is essential for shaping policies that are effective and meaningful.
by Anne Schmidt
In 2019, the term “burnout” was added to the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD). According to the ICD, burnout is a “syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.”
by Melinda L. Estes, M.D.
COVID-19 is a pandemic with no precedent, and certainly no equal. In many ways, we’ve been learning as we go. For health care professionals, this has elevated the importance of peer-to-peer sharing as never before.
by Aaron Wesolowski - AHA Vice President of Policy, Research, Analytics and Strategy
A recent article from Axios attempts to say that the hospital and health system field is not being negatively impacted financially by the pandemic. The article ignores the diverse experiences of hospitals during the pandemic, particularly those that are under significant financial pressure.
by Rick Pollack
Hospitals and health systems have reinvented themselves in many ways to respond to COVID-19. Since March, decades of standard operating procedures have been reexamined, redesigned and refined — all with the goal of saving lives while protecting caregivers and patients’ families during the pandemic.
by Melinda L. Estes, M.D.
We know that prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, demand for health care workers and health care job openings were at record highs. We also know that the pandemic created pressure to quickly ramp up staffing levels and optimize surge capacity, even as the cancellation of non-emergent surgeries caused serious financial challenges for hospitals and health systems.
by Rick Pollack
The good — our society clearly recognizes the vital role our hospitals and health systems play in our nation’s critical infrastructure and how important they are to our communities’ health and safety. The bad — we have seen an increase in the frequency, severity and sophistication of cyberattacks targeting hospitals and health systems.
by Aaron Wesolowski - AHA Vice President of Policy, Research, Analytics and Strategy
A recent analysis from the Peterson Center on Healthcare and the Kaiser Family Foundation, “What drives health spending in the U.S. compared to other countries,” does not provide a full picture on health care spending in the U.S. while also downplaying the immense role that drug costs play in overall health care spending.
by Melinda L. Estes, M.D.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted a critical need for care that is customized, patient-centered, cost-effective and, most of all, successful. Team-based care checks all of these boxes and more.
by Rebecca B. Chickey, MPH, Senior Director, Behavioral Health Services, by Richard Bottner
Stigma leads to discrimination and creates barriers for people to seek treatment and access care, write Richard Bottner, a physician assistant and affiliate faculty member at Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin, and Rebecca Chickey, AHA’s senior director of Behavioral Health Services. Read this first article in a series about reducing stigma to learn about a new website and training focused specifically on substance and opioid use disorder stigma.
by Rick Pollack
While hospitals and health systems — and their brave front-line caregivers — continue to battle the greatest public health challenge of our lifetimes, the Department of Health and Human Services recently made a change to its COVID-19 Provider Relief Fund (PRF) reporting requirements that could jeopardize access to care for patients and communities.
by Melinda L. Estes, M.D.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought increased attention to the issue of health care disparities. And it’s clear we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us to close the gaps.
by Rick Pollack
More than 200,000 of our friends, family members, fellow citizens and front-line workers have succumbed to COVID-19 since March. To put that in context, that’s approximately the same as the population of Salt Lake City, Utah.
by Aaron Wesolowski - AHA Vice President of Policy, Research, Analytics and Strategy
The RAND Corporation has released the third edition of its hospital price transparency study. The AHA previously highlighted our extensive concerns with the data and methodology used in the last version.
by Robyn Begley, DNP, RN, CEO of the American Organization for Nursing Leadership
From the beginning of the COVID-19 pa
by Melinda L. Estes, M.D.
Today, we continue to grapple not only with the COVID-19 pandemic, but also a dangerously polarized election, ongoing civil unrest in the face of untenable systemic racism … and now, 94 major wildfires that are devastating our West Coast neighbors, families and friends, as well as recent hurricanes that have brought new challenges to our colleagues in the South.
by Rick Pollack
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will withdraw its Medicaid fiscal accountability proposed rule from its regulatory agenda.
by Elisa Arespacochaga
The COVID-19 pandemic makes working in health care especially exhausting both physically and mentally. These front-line care workers face putting their families and colleagues at risk for exposure to the virus, working extended shift hours and confronting an unimaginable death toll.