A 2024 study on excess COVID-era mortality, cited by a witness at a recent U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing in support of claims linking COVID-19 vaccines to deaths, has been retracted by the British Medical Journal Public Health. The study, published…

The CDC has issued a Health Alert Network advisory warning of the risk of severe arboviral neuroinvasive disease among patients receiving B cell-depleting or B cell-modulating medications, particularly anti-CD20 monoclonal antibodies. Among published case reports of arboviral neuroinvasive disease in…

The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Ebola outbreak has become the fastest-spreading on record, with the death toll surpassing 2,000 as the rare Bundibugyo strain outpaces the response. Here are eight notes: 1. The toll. As of Aug. 12, the…

HHS is creating a new pathway to evaluate which conditions should be added to the national newborn screening panel as part of a broader effort to modernize a review process that officials say has lagged behind advances in genetic medicine.…

St. Louis-based Ascension closed the disparity in severe hospital-acquired pressure injuries between patients with light and dark skin tones to 0% in fiscal 2026, the health system said Aug. 11. The change followed a systemwide push to standardize skin-tone assessment…

UNC Health Pardee in Hendersonville, N.C., has been designated as a Level III Trauma Center by the state. The three-year designation follows a 12- to 15-month trauma operational period and an on-site review by trauma experts and state evaluators, according…

Hospitals in multiple states have earned new trauma center designations or secured re-verification in 2026, expanding access to emergency care and reinforcing regional trauma networks. The designations — awarded by state health departments or the American College of Surgeons —…

More than two months after California’s new nurse-to-patient staffing ratios for freestanding acute psychiatric hospitals took effect, state lawmakers are pushing regulators to loosen a rule that hospital leaders said has closed beds and destabilized the nursing workforce. Becker’s has been…

Never events — the most severe, preventable harms in patient safety — are often seen as some of healthcare’s worst-case scenarios. But they also carry an overlooked distinction: They can only happen to patients who made it far enough into…

Researchers at Baltimore-based University of Maryland School of Medicine found approximately 5% of adults hospitalized with firearm injuries develop a bacterial infection, with most infections occurring during hospitalization. The study, published Aug. 3 in JAMA Network Open, used the Premier…