For hospitals and health systems, 2023 was the year of doing more with less. Persistent staff shortages and resource constraints, coupled with rising patient volumes, pushed many organizations to implement or expand innovative care delivery approaches this year.

The number of patients admitted with opioid use disorder and injection-related infections opting to be discharged against medical advice before completing treatment increased by 82% in 4 years, a recent Penn Medicine study found.

Windham (Conn.) Hospital, part of Hartford (Conn.) HealthCare, received approval from the state to end its labor and delivery services after a three-year process, the Connecticut Mirror reported Dec. 1.

Christus Spohn Hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas, will continue its emergency medicine program under an expanded partnership with the Nueces County Hospital District.

Lewis County Health System has completed a $32 million-dollar renovation of the surgical center at Lewis County General Hospital and plans to bring back maternity services at the hospital, North Country Public Radio reported Dec. 1.

Caring for patients in the emergency department when there are not enough inpatient beds — ED boarding — is a long-standing practice in hospitals that are over capacity. Not only does it risk patient safety, but clinicians say it's burning them out, too. 

Rome (N.Y.) Health has lowered the age for patients it accepts who need inpatient psychiatric care. 

Following the highly contested closure of a birthing center at UMass Memorial Health's Leominster Hospital the Massachusetts Nurses Association has come out against it and is calling for the state to halt further shutdowns until a review is conducted. 

The COVID-19 pandemic shuffled up trends in emergency department volume, but many systems are seeing hundreds of thousands of patients a year.

Mass General Brigham said the capacity for primary care patients is limited on the main campuses of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Mass General Hospital in Boston, but there is availability within the system.

Emergency department volumes have rebounded since 2020, but little progress has been made to address high ED boarding times, according to a new report the Emergency Department Benchmarking Alliance.

With patient safety institute I-PASS, the Kentucky Hospital Association has launched an effort to reduce communication breakdowns by improving efficiency of clinical handoffs across 128 hospitals statewide. 

Hospitals in the Columbus, Ohio, area were notified of a "mass casualty incident" Nov. 14 after a bus accident left three dead and at least 18 injured, according to The Columbus Dispatch.

Elective surgeries at Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton, Mass., have been on pause since Nov. 6 amid problems with the equipment used to sterilize medical instruments and devices, according to a Nov. 13 report from The Boston Globe. 

Nearly all pediatric hospital beds in a North Texas region are full amid a surge in respiratory syncytial virus. Nationwide, the positivity rate has increased from nearly 5% in mid-October to over 10%. 

Influx in demand for pediatric mental health services has led to more children and adolescents staying in emergency departments for long periods, The Wall Street Journal reported Nov. 8.

PeaceHealth's inpatient rehabilitation unit at Sacred Heart Medical Center University District hospital campus in Eugene, Ore., will relocate to PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend in Springfield, Ore., on Dec. 15.

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles has begun an emergency department expansion project that will add nearly 17,000 square feet to the space and increase the number of care spaces to 100. 

Denver-based AdventHealth Porter will remain closed through Nov. 9 due to a boiler system failure, The Denver Post reported.

Children's hospitals across the U.S. are bracing for capacity strain amid supply issues for a new antibody drug meant to prevent severe illness from respiratory syncytial virus in infants, the Children's Hospital Association told The Hill in an Oct. 31 report.