News Briefs
Nonprofit Developing Standards for AI in Healthcare
Health Level Seven International (HL7), a global standards development body, is diving into artificial intelligence to create frameworks and standards for safe and interoperable AI in healthcare. The nearly 40-year-old nonprofit organization has hundreds of standards for the sharing of electronic health information, including Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources.
(Source: FierceHealthcare, 2025-07-17)
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Lawmaker Introduces Protect Medicaid and Rural Hospitals Act
Senator Josh Hawley, R-Mo., has introduced new legislation that would effectively reverse some of the biggest cuts to Medicaid funding that are set to take place under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Hawley's new bill, the Protect Medicaid and Rural Hospitals Act, would double the federal investment in rural healthcare while reversing future changes to Medicaid hospital funding.
(Source: Healthcare Finance News, 2025-07-17)
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Proposed New CMS Rules Aim to Advance Hospital Site Neutrality
Medicare payment to hospitals could move toward site neutrality among health systems and physician offices under new rules proposed by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Leaders of Medicare say new patient-focused reforms will "modernize payments, expand access to care, and enhance hospital accountability," with regulations proposed in the calendar year 2026 Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System and the Ambulatory Surgical Center Payment System proposed rule.
(Source: Medical Economics, 2025-07-17)
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Proposed Rule Would Boost Medicare Hospital Payments by 2.4%
Hospitals could get $8 billion more in Medicare reimbursement for outpatient services next year under a new proposed rule that would raise rates by 2.4 percent. Hospital groups aren’t pleased, with the American Hospital Association calling the pay bump inadequate.
(Source: Healthcare Dive, 2025-07-16)
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CMS Extends Nursing Homes' Revalidation Requirement Again
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has extended the window for nursing homes to file off-cycle Medicare revalidation documents until Jan. 1, 2026. It marks the third postponement and averts a previously announced Aug. 1 deadline.
(Source: McKnight's Long-Term Care News, 2025-07-16)
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86% of Health Organizations Have Economic Contingency Plans
Healthcare delivery organizations are saying they have yet to fully recover financially from the COVID-19 pandemic, and a high level of uncertainty around changing regulations and economic conditions is ratcheting up the financial pressures of narrow margins, staffing shortages, and rising costs. Because of that, 86 percent of healthcare organizations in a new KLAS survey say they have contingency plans, usually more than one, in place.
(Source: Healthcare Finance News, 2025-07-16)
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Several Large Healthcare Data Breaches Reported to OCR
In recent weeks, several large data breaches have been reported to the HHS Office for Civil Rights, or OCR, collectively affecting millions of individuals across the U.S. At the time of publication, more than 30 million individuals had been impacted by the hundreds of healthcare data breaches reported to OCR so far in 2025.
(Source: Tech Target, 2025-07-18)
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Study Finds 759 Hospitals Experienced Disruption After Outage
A new study by a team of medical cybersecurity researchers has taken the first steps toward quantifying the cost of CrowdStrike's disaster, not in dollars, but in potential harm to hospitals and their patients across the U.S. By scanning internet-exposed parts of hospital networks before, during, and after the crisis, they detected that at minimum, 759 hospitals in the U.S. appear to have experienced network disruption of some kind on that day.
(Source: Wired News, 2025-07-19)
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Rural Hospitals Will Continue to Struggle in Light of Budget Bill
After President Donald Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" brought in some of the biggest healthcare spending cuts in American history, there has been growing concern about how many rural hospitals, both those already at risk of closure and others, will shut as a result of the financial burden shifted to states and what that will mean for local communities. Nearly half of all rural hospitals across the country were already struggling financially before these new cuts were brought in.
(Source: Newsweek, 2025-07-18)
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Hospital Dealmaking Slowed in Second Quarter, Report Finds
Hospital dealmaking remained quiet during the second quarter with sell-offs from larger health systems comprising half of newly announced deals, per a recent report. Just eight hospital transactions were announced from April through June, a slight bump over the prior quarter's five deals but still lower than historical trends, Kaufman Hall wrote in a recent review.
(Source: FierceHealthcare, 2025-07-16)
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States Push Back Against P.E. Ownership in Healthcare
Private equity has become the healthcare provider for millions of Americans, spending some $1 trillion over the past decade to buy up hospitals, nursing homes, and medical practices across the country -- with little scrutiny. But states are starting to push back after the spectacular collapse over the past year of two large, P.E.-owned healthcare systems that left communities and patients without access to care.
(Source: Quartz, 2025-07-18)
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