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Enrollment of Black and Hispanic students in medical schools dropped precipitously last year after the Supreme Court banned the consideration of race in admissions, according to data released Thursday by the Association of American Medical Colleges. (McFarling, 1/9)

Health systems divested hospitals at a record pace last year, a new report shows. Nearly two-thirds of the 72 announced hospital transactions in 2024 involved an organization that was selling facilities, according to the latest data from Kaufman Hall. That’s double the percentage in 2023 and the highest tally tracked by the consultancy, the report released Thursday shows. (Kacik, 1/9)

UnitedHealth Group and Amedisys have asked the courts to dismiss the federal government's challenge to their $3.3 billion merger, arguing that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has not made a clear enough case that it would be anticompetitive. In the filing, submitted Wednesday in federal district court in Maryland, the companies said that the DOJ has not clearly outlined the regions in which the combination would limit competition. It lists “hundreds of local home health markets,” “dozens of hospice markets,” and “hundreds of local labor markets" in its complaint, according to the motion, which should, the companies argue, lead to dismissal. (Minemyer, 1/9)

Prospect Medical Holdings, the owner of three struggling Connecticut hospitals in Waterbury, Manchester, and Vernon, is working with restructuring advisors to explore ways to address the company’s financial challenges, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. The hospitals, which Prospect acquired in 2016, have faced worsening financial and operational problems in recent years. (Golvala, 1/9)

Sarasota Memorial Health Care System on Monday opened a new emergency care center in Lakewood Ranch. It is Sarasota Memorial’s fourth emergency care center, and the second freestanding emergency facility not attached to a hospital campus. (1/9)

Individual coverage health reimbursement arrangements, or ICHRAs, are either the future of health coverage or merely a blip on the radar, depending on who you ask. ICHRAs allows employers to offer workers tax-free money to buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act (ACA), rather than being told to select a plan. (Tong, 1/9)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Health Care AI, Intended To Save Money, Turns Out To Require A Lot Of Expensive Humans

Preparing cancer patients for difficult decisions is an oncologist’s job. They don’t always remember to do it, however. At the University of Pennsylvania Health System, doctors are nudged to talk about a patient’s treatment and end-of-life preferences by an artificially intelligent algorithm that predicts the chances of death. But it’s far from being a set-it-and-forget-it tool. A routine tech checkup revealed the algorithm decayed during the covid-19 pandemic, getting 7 percentage points worse at predicting who would die, according to a 2022 study. There were likely real-life impacts. (Tahir, 1/10)