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While operating on Gary Avila’s arm last year, a surgeon at Stanford Hospital accidentally nicked a nerve, causing an injury that affected the use of his hand. Mr. Avila’s injury was resolved through a Stanford program known as Pearl, short for Process for Early Assessment, Resolution and Learning. In addition to an apology, an explanation of what had gone wrong, and a waiver of his medical bill, Mr. Avila received a monetary settlement that both sides agreed to keep confidential to compensate for his pain and suffering. Stanford’s Pearl program is serving as a model for more so-called communication and resolution programs that hospitals are adopting to interact with patients when things go wrong and avoid costly litigation. (Landro, 2/1)

A health care startup made a wild pitch to Cara Waller, CEO of the Newport Orthopedic Institute in Newport Beach. The company said it could get patients more engaged by "automating" physician empathy. It “almost made me nauseous,” she said. How can you automate something as deeply personal as empathy? But Waller needed help. Her physicians, who perform as many as 500 surgeries a year, manage large numbers of patients at various stages of treatment and recovery. They needed a better way to communicate with patients and track their progress. (Feder Ostrov, 2/2)

Hospitals and doctors’ offices nationwide might have avoided nearly 2,000 patient deaths — and $1.7 billion in malpractice costs — if medical staff and patients communicated better, a report released Monday has found. (Bailey, 2/1)

Like so many in his profession, Dr. Jason A. Tracy used a pager to send and receive urgent messages every day. It was by his side for nearly 20 years, ever-present on his belt, vibrating with purposeful vigor whenever Tracy was needed by a patient or colleague. That was until a couple months ago, when, for the first time in his medical career, Tracy took off his pager and never put it back on. He turned instead to a secure application that allowed him to text colleagues on a sleek and decidedly 21st-century device, his iPhone. (Dayal McCluskey, 2/2)

Hospital operators are bracing for the possibility of more reductions to their Medicare and Medicaid fees in the coming budget cycle after absorbing billions of dollars in cuts since 2010. The American Hospital Association appealed to President Barack Obama in a Jan. 27 letter “to protect access to health care services for seniors and the disabled” by excluding proposed Medicare reductions from his fiscal 2017 budget plan due to be released Feb. 9. (Attias, 2/1)