Hospitals

One aim of Obamacare was to ease the financial strain on nonprofit hospitals that provide medical care to people who lack insurance and can't pay their bills. That plan is working, hospitals say.

Only 7 percent of the nation's hospitals assessed by Medicare were good enough to win 5-star ratings. The government used patient reviews to come up with the grades.

The health insurance provider has revealed that a cyberattack discovered in January may have made the medical and financial information of 11 million people vulnerable to thieves.

Hospitals are notoriously difficult places to sleep, despite efforts to make them less noisy. Cheap, simple workarounds can help, a study says. Taking the sleep hormone melatonin helped the most.

Medical technology can make patient care better and more precise. But the gadgets and computers can cause trouble, too. One big problem is that most of the devices often can't talk with one another.

The federal government now factors patient satisfaction ratings into the rates Medicare pays hospitals. Some hospitals with lower ratings are finding it's difficult to change patients' perceptions.

Many people check up on hospitals before they check in as patients. But there's a catch. A hospital that gets lauded by one group can be panned by another.

There's good news and bad news about electronic medical records. They're now in most doctors' offices — but most doctors still can't easily share them.

The Justice Department claimed patient safety celebrity Dr. Chuck Denham solicited payments from a medical products company to win a prestigious National Quality Forum endorsement for its antiseptic.

Clostridium difficile sickens nearly half a million Americans annually, killing about 29,000, say federal health officials. They warn hospitals and nursing homes to tighten hygiene protocols.

Companies mainly in lower-wage industries that hadn't previously offered health coverage had been flocking to the stripped-down plans for 2015.

The lethal bacteria that sickened people at a Los Angeles hospital belong to one of three types the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says hospitals should most urgently monitor and prevent.