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The number of students enrolling in nursing programs in Florida is increasing. But colleges and universities are reporting a drop in qualified applicants. That’s one of the findings in a new report from the Florida Center for Nursing. It surveyed more than 500 programs over the past year – most of them in Broward, Miami-Dade and Monroe counties. (Zaragovia, 12/19)

One week after confirming IT layoffs, Kaiser Permanente said it will cut 79 additional employees in California early next year.A spokesperson for the Oakland, California-based health system said Tuesday the change will affect administrative roles. The layoffs are effective Jan. 4, according to Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification documents filed this month. (Hudson, 12/19)

Employer Direct Healthcare, a specialty healthcare network that connects patients with providers, is now valued at $1 billion following a $92 million investment from Insight Partners, a global technology investor. The industry unicorn's other investors are Serent Capital, Redmile Group and Dundon Capital Partners, which will maintain their ownership stakes. (DeSilva, 12/19)

Jefferson and Lehigh Valley Health Network plan to merge next year, creating a system of 30 hospitals and more than 700 care sites in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The two health systems said Tuesday they signed a non-binding letter of intent to merge and plan to sign a definitive agreement and close the transaction sometime in 2024, pending regulatory approval. (Hudson, 12/19)

Digital health faced a tumultuous funding environment in 2023, and some investors expect more of the same in 2024. The year started with only a trace of the momentum following funding records in 2021 and early 2022. As the calendar turned to 2023, all signs pointed toward a tighter market. ... Heading in 2024, most investors are still cautious about their investments, although some are a little more optimistic, especially when it comes to artificial intelligence. (Perna and Turner, 12/19)

When physicians use artificial intelligence tools with baked-in systemic bias to help figure out what's wrong with patients, it's perhaps little surprise they're apt to make less accurate diagnoses. But a common safeguard against potential bias — transparency about how the AI came to form its predictions — doesn't help mitigate that problem, a new JAMA study finds. (Reed, 12/20)

Within the first four months of implementing a Spanish language AI assistant for practitioners, Nabla has seen 10% of its clinicians using the feature. Nabla, a Paris-based startup, launched a Spanish language option for Copilot, as the tool is called, earlier this summer. It claims to be the first AI scribe to have done so. So far, it has seen rapid adoption among clinicians, the company says, particularly among psychiatrists, psychologists and psychotherapists, who account for nearly half of its total users. (Gliadkovskaya, 12/18)

Rite Aid will be banned from using AI-powered facial recognition technology for five years under a proposed settlement of Federal Trade Commission charges, the FTC announced Tuesday. The FTC alleged in a complaint Tuesday that the pharmacy retail chain failed to implement reasonable procedures in hundreds of stores and prevent harm to consumers with what the agency called Rite Aid's "reckless" use of facial recognition technology that it said "disproportionately impacted people of color." (Falconer, 12/19)

Dr. Michael H. Stone, a psychiatrist and scholar who sought to define evil and to differentiate its manifestations from the typical behavior of people who are mentally ill, died on Dec. 6 at his home in Manhattan. He was 90. The cause was complications of a stroke he had in January, his son David said. Dr. Stone was best known to the public as the author of the book “The Anatomy of Evil” (2009) and as the host from 2006 to 2008 of the television program “Most Evil,” for which he interviewed people imprisoned for murder to determine what motivated them to engage in an evil criminal act. (Roberts, 12/16)