NEJM Catalyst

NEJM Catalyst Practical innovations in health care delivery:

Ideas, solutions, and case studies to improve patient care and drive value in health organizations.

Health care delivery is undergoing a major transformation around quality, cost, and access. NEJM Catalyst brings health care executives, clinician leaders, and clinicians together to share innovative ideas and practical applications for enhancing the value of health care delivery. NEJM Catalyst brings insightful articles and real-life examples from a network of top thought leaders, experts and adv

isors to provide:

Practical innovations in health care delivery;

Impeccable quality and impact;

Active contributions from renowned authorities, thought-leaders, and advisors;

Independent and impartial curation; and

An exchange of ideas among executives and clinicians. NEJM Catalyst is produced by NEJM Group, a division of the Massachusetts Medical Society, located in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Artificial intelligence (AI) offers the potential to improve productivity and reduce waste across the U.S. health care s...
09/15/2026

Artificial intelligence (AI) offers the potential to improve productivity and reduce waste across the U.S. health care system. Quantifying achievable value from AI technologies can inform organizational strategies and national spending projections. In a recent In Depth, the authors aimed to estimate the annual run-rate net value achievable within 5 years through full adoption of AI use cases across major health care stakeholders and domains without compromising quality or access.

Assuming full use of AI, the authors estimated an annual run-rate net value of 5.7%–10.6% of overall health care spending (US$438.9–US$810.7 billion annually) within the next 5 years without sacrificing quality and access. Use cases where genAI was the leading AI technology accounted for about half of the total opportunity.

Overall administrative expenses could be reduced by 9.4%–19.8% (US$120.1–US$252.0 billion annually). The administrative expense opportunity accounted for 29.8% of the total. Medical expenses could be reduced by 5.0%–8.7% (US$318.8–US$558.6 billion annually) and accounted for the remaining 70.2% of the value opportunity.

A Commentary from Jenny Shand, PhD, and Martin Utley, PhD, argues that AI-enabled time savings in health care do not aut...
09/14/2026

A Commentary from Jenny Shand, PhD, and Martin Utley, PhD, argues that AI-enabled time savings in health care do not automatically translate into productivity or cash savings, and that organizations need explicit, feasible, and resourced logic models to convert those savings into meaningful value for patients, staff, and services.

"A logic model forces clarity," write the authors. "An AI-driven scheduling and routing tool may reduce the time that salaried community nurses spend traveling between patients’ homes; ambient voice technology (AVT) may cut minutes of documentation time per consultation; a diagnostic AI model may prescreen chest x-rays, allowing radiologists to focus on potentially abnormal studies."

Case Study: What Happened When a Heart Failure Unit Asked for Help with Its Culture?Senior leaders at Tampa General Hosp...
09/12/2026

Case Study: What Happened When a Heart Failure Unit Asked for Help with Its Culture?

Senior leaders at Tampa General Hospital initiated an intervention using the Survey Feedback method, essentially empowering the Heart Failure Center of Excellence members to develop their own solution, which, based on pre- and postdeployment surveys, has shown improvement in key metrics related to unit communication, teamwork, and trust.

A survey of the NEJM Catalyst Insights Council finds increased investment in data innovation for many purposes, yet few ...
09/11/2026

A survey of the NEJM Catalyst Insights Council finds increased investment in data innovation for many purposes, yet few organizations report measurable value at the enterprise level.

An initiative at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health integrates a physician-focused component to its process as a way to...
09/08/2026

An initiative at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health integrates a physician-focused component to its process as a way to proactively address the potential for provider harm as a consequence associated with the grievance review process.

A Commentary from University College London argues that AI-enabled time savings in health care do not automatically tran...
09/03/2026

A Commentary from University College London argues that AI-enabled time savings in health care do not automatically translate into productivity or cash savings, and that organizations need explicit, feasible, and resourced logic models to convert those savings into meaningful value for patients, staff, and services.

Clostridioides difficile (C. diff) infection is one of the most common hospital-acquired infections. These highly contag...
09/02/2026

Clostridioides difficile (C. diff) infection is one of the most common hospital-acquired infections. These highly contagious bacteria colonize the intestinal tract after normal gut flora has been disrupted, such as with the use of antibiotics or immunosuppressive agents.

A disproportionate number of hospital-acquired C. diff infections were attributed to a nephrology unit at Henry Ford Hospital. Through early detection, interdisciplinary collaboration, and culture change, the unit was able to reduce hospital-acquired C. diff infections by 90%.

Read the full Case Study: https://nej.md/3UiXrhi

A recent survey of the NEJM Catalyst Insights Council about data innovation finds that health care organizations do not ...
09/01/2026

A recent survey of the NEJM Catalyst Insights Council about data innovation finds that health care organizations do not lack data. Rather, they lack interoperability and insights.

“The investment is real, the intent is serious, but the gap between piloting and enterprise-scale impact remains the defining challenge,” says Steve Miff, PhD. "When two-thirds of leaders have increased their data innovation investment, yet fewer than 1 in 10 report measurable value at scale, the problem is not ambition, it is execution.”

Drawing on international case examples from the Future of Health organizations, a new Commentary identifies leadership c...
08/31/2026

Drawing on international case examples from the Future of Health organizations, a new Commentary identifies leadership competencies needed to meet current and emerging global challenges, innovative examples and tactics to implement those competencies in practice, and considerations for how to develop needed competencies in a range of countries and regions.

Health systems often hire more specialists to ease shortages and then see a paradoxical increase in wait times. They cou...
08/28/2026

Health systems often hire more specialists to ease shortages and then see a paradoxical increase in wait times. They could take lessons from highway engineering in how to ease this congestion.

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