JAMA Health Forum

09/14/2026

More than 66 million people live in rural areas in the US. Rural populations have been falling behind urban populations in life expectancy and a range of health indicators for the past 2 decades. Katy Backes Kozhimannil, PhD, MPA, of the University of Minnesota joins JAMA Health Forum Editor in Chief Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH, to discuss health policy and improving health for rural populations. https://ja.ma/4ylbuBN

09/13/2026

serving US hospitals became more concentrated from 2014 to 2024, with Vizient, HealthTrust, and Premier accounting for most hospital affiliations by 2024. This pattern indicates increasing consolidation among health care supply chain intermediaries and may have implications for competition, contracting practices, and hospital purchasing power.

This cross-sectional study examines changes in the market concentration of hospitals affiliated with group purchasing organizations between 2014 and 2024.

09/12/2026

Explicit policies addressing in aging physicians are uncommon across G7 countries. Compared with other safety-critical professions, medicine uses fewer formal age-based oversight approaches, reflecting ethical, legal, and practical tensions around age-based assessments for physicians. Cognitive screening may be best framed as a supportive measure for physicians and patients within the broader context of population safety and public trust.

This Special Communication compares policies regarding cognitive decline in aging physicians among the US, Canada, and the other Group of Seven (G7) countries and how these countries manage age-related cognitive risks in other safety-critical fields.

09/11/2026

Among rural and urban hospitals that provided obstetric services, lower birth volume, unprofitability, proximity to another obstetric hospital, and for-profit status were associated with loss of hospital-based . These findings indicate that risk factors for closure differ for obstetric unit closure vs hospital closure, which may inform distinct policy approaches to preserve access.

This cohort study assesses risk factors for obstetric unit closure and closure of entire hospitals providing obstetric services.

09/11/2026

Among patients with receiving dialysis, nephrologist participation in the voluntary Kidney Care Choices model was associated with higher home dialysis use vs participation in neither model. Participation in both the mandatory and voluntary kidney care models was also associated with higher home dialysis use, but not more than participation in the voluntary model alone.

This cohort study reports on participation by nephrologists in mandatory and voluntary value-based kidney care models and the association with home dialysis use.

09/11/2026

📝 Editorial: Rural populations in the US continue to experience worsening health outcomes and widening gaps vs urban populations, alongside contraction of the rural health system, including hospital closures, reduced obstetric services, and primary care shortages. The article indicates that the Rural Health Transformation Program creates an opportunity to study which policy and delivery strategies can improve and population health.

As the world—and the US—urbanizes, there has been an appropriate increase in science and scholarship about the role that urban environments play in shaping health.1 However, accompanying the growth in focus on urban health has been a growing inattention to rural populations, a concomitant worsen...

09/11/2026

📝 Viewpoint: Regulatory restrictions on physician dual fee schedules and cash pricing may prevent clinicians from routinely offering lower cash prices to patients, even when cash transactions are faster, cheaper, and less administratively complex than insurance billing. The article indicates that these restrictions can make health care more expensive by limiting direct-to-consumer cash pricing.

This Viewpoint discusses state and federal regulatory restrictions on physician dual fee schedules and cash-based pricing and describes associated increases in health care costs.

09/07/2026

In Virginia, preventive care reimbursement in managed care was higher than in Medicaid fee-for-service, but rates remained below those paid by employer-sponsored insurance, Marketplace plans, and plans.

These findings indicate that payment differences across payers may continue to affect clinician participation and access to preventive care for Medicaid enrollees.

https://ja.ma/4zZEZL8

09/07/2026

Among privately insured patients, rising premiums from 2011 to 2024 were largely associated with growth in health spending rather than growth in insurer markups.

These findings indicate that efforts to slow premium growth may need to focus on reducing underlying health care spending.

https://ja.ma/4gRKlz4

09/07/2026

Among US teenagers and young adults, health warnings were perceived as more effective than a neutral control message for discouraging participants from wanting to use social media and for increasing awareness of its harms. Warnings about mental health harms were perceived as more effective than a screen time break warning, indicating that warning content may matter for policy design.

This randomized clinical trial examines whether teenagers and young adults perceive that social media warnings discourage them from wanting to use social media and increase their awareness of the harms of social media.