Packed emergency rooms, top hospitals, and treating diabetes: Our most popular patient experience stories of 2024

In our coverage of hospitals and the healthcare industry, we aim to offer perspectives on trends affecting patients and where hospitals are succeeding in caring for patients.

The boarding crisis in hospital emergency rooms emerged as our most well-read patient experience story of 2024.

These five stories were the most popular patient experience stories published by Chief Healthcare Executive® over the past year.

And this kicks off the first in a series of stories of our most highly read stories in a few different categories. Look for more in the coming days.

1. Doctors, nurses sound alarm about boarding crisis in emergency departments

It’s been a problem for years, and it’s getting worse.

Patients are getting stuck in the emergency departments of hospitals for hours, and days, clinicians and health executives say. Doctors and nurses say the boarding crisis is becoming more difficult.

Physicians and hospital leaders say patients end up staying in the emergency department because inpatient beds aren’t available for a variety of reasons. In some cases, hospitals are limited by the number of nurses they have available to treat patients.

Hospitals are also hampered by their difficulty to transfer patients to nursing homes and rehabilitation centers because those facilities don’t have enough beds. So the backlog in the emergency department grows.

Chris Dellinger, president of the Emergency Nurses Association, wrote about the problem in a message to the group’s members.

“You don’t need to have decades of experience in the emergency department to understand the seriousness of the ongoing boarding crisis,” Dellinger wrote. “Patients waiting for hours, sometimes days, in the ED for an inpatient bed or a transfer to more specialized care suffer a negative impact on their health and well-being, and it also puts additional stress on already strained emergency care teams.”

It’s also a problem in pediatric hospitals. Matthew Cook, president and CEO of the Children’s Hospital Association, spoke about it in a September interview with Chief Healthcare Executive®.

“The emergency departments are not places for children with a mental health crisis,” Cook said.

Doctors, nurses and executives are imploring policymakers to help address the problem.

2. Coming soon: New Jersey’s first cancer hospital

New Jersey is soon going to see its first freestanding cancer hospital.

RWJBarnabas Health and the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey are working together to build the $750 million facility. The plans were first announced in 2019. RWJBarnabas said that the hospital is slated to open in early 2025.

The Jack & Sheryl Morris Cancer Center is under construction in New Brunswick. It’s named in honor of Jack Morris, the chairman of Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, and his wife, Sheryl.

The new, 12-story hospital is a 510,000-square-foot facility and will feature 96 inpatient beds. The new cancer hospital is designed to bring together clinical care and research all in one location.

3. Patients with diabetes need more than glucose monitoring systems

More patients are utilizing continuous glucose monitoring systems to manage diabetes, and doctors say they are encouraged by how the devices are helping patients have a better quality of life.

Arti Masturzo, the chief medical officer at CCS, a chronic care management company, says patients need support and guidance in using those devices. Too often, they aren’t getting the support they need, she says.

She talked about the need to educate both patients and clinicians.

“Managing diabetes can be a challenging journey, especially since many patients prescribed CGMs today are more often than not medically complex and living with multiple comorbidities,” she said. “It takes a lot of motivation to stay on track.”

4. Healthgrades names America’s top 50 hospitals for 2024

The popular website, which helps patients find the right providers, examined 4,500 hospitals in coming up with its list of the best hospitals in America.

Healthgrades ranks the best in three different groups: America’s 50 Best Hospitals, America’s 100 Best Hospitals, and America’s 250 Best Hospitals. The website examined how hospitals performed across 30 different categories.

Brad Bowman, chief medical officer and head data scientist at Healthgrades, said the top 250 hospitals all performed at high levels. .

“What’s interesting about these hospitals is they are all very close,” Bowman said. “These 250 hospitals aren’t that different. So number 250 isn’t that much off from number one.”

There are smaller hospitals and some with less recognition that are competing well with hospitals with high national profiles, Bowman said.

“There are smaller, lesser known hospitals, giving them a run for their money, at least on the quality sort of side of things,” Bowman said.

5. U.S. News unveils Best Hospitals list for 2024-25

Only about 1 in 10 hospitals earned recognition among the best hospitals ranked by U.S. News & World Report.

The U.S. News rankings gain a great deal of attention, and plenty of hospitals tout their high rankings in their marketing campaigns. This year, 466 hospitals earned recognition as Best Regional Hospitals, while 20 hospitals landed in the U.S. News “Honor Roll” this year.

U.S. News also named high-performing hospitals in specialties such as cancer, heart care and neurology.

This year, U.S. News added data from Medicare Advantage plans in its analysis of hospitals. As a result, U.S. News analyzed far more patient records than it did just a year ago, said Min Hee Seo, senior health data scientist at U.S. News & World Report.

“We almost double the size of the data for certain hospitals that provide care for patients with Medicare Advantage insurance,” Seo told Chief Healthcare Executive®. “So our outcomes are more rigorous, and the evaluations of hospitals are better, as patient populations are better represented.”