Healthcare

Healthcare

The Veterans Affairs Department is failing to track how many calls from its patients it is answering and what is happening with those calls, according to a flash report from the agency's watchdog, which said the failures are putting vulnerable veterans at risk. In 13 of the 15 medical facilities the inspector general reviewed, key data including caller hang up rates, answer rates and average wait times were not being tracked.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is reportedly mulling whether more prescription drugs should be sold over the counter (OTC) at pharmacies. In an interview on Wednesday, FDA commissioner Martin Makary told CNBC that everything should be over the counter except drugs that are deemed unsafe or addictive or that require clinical monitoring. Makary said the agency is reviewing how it decides which drugs can be sold with or without a prescription from a health care practitioner.

Healthcare isn't going anywhere. An aging population, chronic disease management, and breakthrough treatments ensure this sector remains essential regardless of market conditions. Health Care Select Sector SPDR Fund ( NYSEARCA:XLV) offers concentrated exposure to this defensive sector, but with concentration comes tradeoffs investors must understand before allocating capital. Pure Healthcare Exposure With Mega-Cap Anchors XLV functions as a single-sector bet on American healthcare, holding 60 companies across pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and healthcare services.

Lots of people say: 'With the policy so messed up in Washington right now, why in the world do you spend so much time thinking about it?' he told Fortune. 'It's because I have a great belief that... the only way to get to large scale is good policy. I see the power of things like the Medicare Modernization Act, which introduced prescription drugs. Believe it or not, before that, prescription drugs weren't part of Medicare at all.'

SPDR S&P Pharmaceuticals ETF (NYSEARCA:XPH) exists to solve a specific problem: how do you gain broad exposure to pharmaceutical companies without the concentration risk of the largest healthcare names dominating your returns? XPH holds 57 positions with relatively even weighting-no single stock exceeds 2.12% of the portfolio. That structure delivers pure-play pharma exposure spanning large-cap stalwarts like Eli Lilly and Company () and Merck & Co. (), mid-cap specialty pharmaceutical companies, and smaller biotech names focused on niche therapeutics.

Medtronic ( NYSE: MDT) delivered its strongest enterprise revenue growth in 10 quarters, posting 8.7% reported growth (6.0% organic) for Q3 fiscal 2026. Cardiac Ablation Drives Outperformance The Cardiovascular Portfolio led the quarter with 13.8% reported growth, powered by an exceptional 80% surge in Cardiac Ablation Solutions. U.S. cardiac ablation revenue exploded 137%, driven by the company's pulsed field ablation (PFA) portfolio. Cardiac Rhythm & Heart Failure revenue reached $1.86 billion, up 17%, while Diabetes posted 8.3% organic growth to $796 million.

Livingston HealthCare in Livingston, Montana, says its phone system has been restored after a cybersecurity incident disrupted communications and led the hospital to take some systems offline, but network disruptions continue as restoration work proceeds. The nonprofit hospital said Feb. 13 that a "potential cybersecurity incident" disrupted its phone systems and network and that it temporarily took certain systems offline "out of an abundance of caution" while it assessed the situation and worked with outside experts.

The union is preparing to file charges against the hospital and, if necessary, complain to the state Department of Health about the new procedures, the Bronx Times has learned. In a Feb. 15 letter, written by union negotiator and former NYSNA president Judy Sheridan-Gonzalez on behalf of the executive committee, nurses demanded an immediate meeting to discuss their opposition to changes implemented while they were away and the atmosphere of surveillance they say greeted them upon return.

Throughout, there's a Virtual Assistant chatbot if you need to ask questions or get help, which gives me extra peace of mind. Plus, it's included with the DIY service, which saves me a bunch of money, rather than going with one of the options that includes a real tax expert to look over things. H&R Block's service asks lots of questions related to potential tax breaks,

If you find yourself in need of emergency care in Massachusetts, it could take a while. The Bay State ranks No. 3 in the U.S. for longest average time patients spend in the emergency department, according to World Population Review. Patients here spend an average of 189 minutes - more than three hours - in the ER before leaving the hospital. Only Maryland (228 minutes) and Delaware (195 minutes) report longer average delays.

The 4% rule and most retirement calculators often just assume you are going to spend the same inflation-adjusted amount of money for the next 30 years. On the one hand, this is a simple and clean idea for managing finances, but it's also completely wrong. Real retirement spending rarely works like it's supposed to, and if you are planning on it being static, you're likely setting yourself up for a big surprise.

Innovate UK has awarded more than £300,000 in funding to a collaboration between the NIHR HealthTech Research Centre in Sustainable Innovation and UK healthtech company Sanome, to accelerate the development of an AI-enabled system for the early detection of hospital-acquired infections. The 18-month SMART grant will support the co-design and roll-out of MEMORI, a Class IIb CE-certified software-as-a-medical-device (SaMD) platform that analyses real-time clinical data to predict infection risk up to seven days before symptoms appear.

Nearly 7,000 Irish medical professionals are now registered to work in Australia, sparking concerns about the impact on the Irish health service as the number seeking a better working life down under has risen by 86pc in six years.

The Covid-19 pandemic spurred a rapid expansion of health tech companies, and new market realities post pandemic meant it was only a matter of time before some consolidated. Indeed, investors in recent years predicted greater M&A activity only to never see it materialize either in 2024 or 2025. But 2026 may be the year the predictions do come true. Consider the deals announced in just over a month:

Invisalign is not a one-size-fits-all dental service. It is a customized orthodontic treatment that relies on advanced technology, clinical expertise, and ongoing patient monitoring. Each aligner is designed using digital scans of the patient's teeth and adjusted gradually to guide tooth movement over time. In Singapore, Invisalign treatments must be prescribed and supervised by licensed dental professionals. The process typically includes consultation, 3D imaging, treatment planning, aligner fabrication, and multiple follow-up visits.

The soft, flexible, robotic probe could dramatically improve safety during fetal surgeries, procedures in which physicians operate on a fetus before birth. Currently, doctors primarily rely on intermittent measurements of fetal heart rate using ultrasound imaging from outside the pregnant person's body. The new device, on the other hand, can be gently inserted through the same narrow port already used in fetal surgeries.

"I always said that abrasives was a 'rough' business," jokes Harris on a phone interview with TODAY.com.

BOROUGH PARK - MAIMONIDES MEDICAL CENTER HAS BEEN AWARDED GRANTS from the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation. Named for an indefatigable immigrant nun from Italy who helped the needy in Brooklyn and beyond, the Mother Cabrini Foundation recently awarded its 2025 Year-End Grants, including $1.5 million in healthcare workforce funding to enable Maimonides Medical Center to strengthen its Nurse Residency Program and $400,000 in general funding for its Brooklyn Parenting Center.

Baptist Health Sunrise will be the health network's most innovative hospital, featuring a unique layout, with a medical office building integrated into the hospital and a structure designed to accommodate growth. It will open with 100 inpatient beds, a 30-bed emergency department - and plenty of room to expand on its 26 acres of land. It also includes the latest technology - robotic surgical equipment and AI-enabled imaging.

Between March 2020 and March 2022, over 100 million telemedicine services were delivered to approximately 17 million Australians. The Australian government invested $409 million to make telehealth permanent, whilst the UK announced £600 million for digital health infrastructure in April 2025. Patient adoption is equally impressive: 60% find telemedicine more convenient than in-person appointments, 55% report higher satisfaction with teleconsultations, and 74% of millennials prefer virtual appointments for routine care. These aren't temporary shifts; they represent a fundamental transformation in healthcare delivery.

I see this daily in veterinary medicine, where high burnout rates cost the sector upwards of $2 billion per year. It's a challenging environment with long hours, stressful workloads and patients that can't even tell you what's wrong. But I've found that the best way to boost performance and even increase capacity with maxed-out teams is to address the underlying operational issues.