Workers who do not take advantage of their vacation days may be missing out on health benefits that come from taking a break, researchers from the University of South Australia (UniSA) found in a study published earlier this year.

The study, one of the largest to analyze adult movement behavior patterns when on vacation, found that workers were more likely to engage in healthier behaviors during their time off—such as increased sleep and physical activity—and that the behaviors continued when they returned to work.

“When people go on holiday, they’re changing their everyday responsibilities because they’re not locked down to their normal schedule,” study coauthor and UniSA research associate Ty Ferguson said in an April statement.

The study analyzed fitness tracker data from over 300 Australian adults for 13+ months. While on vacation, data from the participants’ devices showed that they slept 21 more minutes and exercised five more minutes per day. Data from the devices also showed that participants had 29 minutes less sedentary time each day compared to their pre-vacation routine, the study found.

The longer the vacation, the longer it took to return to pre-vacation levels of sleep and physical activity after the trip. Participants who went on vacations that were at least a week long saw their amount of sleep remain higher than pre-vacation levels for at least the first week post-vacation, according to the study.

A good night’s rest can help decrease your risk of infection and antibiotic use.

“Getting enough sleep can help improve our mood, cognitive function, and productivity. It can also help lower our risk of developing a range of health conditions, such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and depression,” Ferguson said in the April statement.

Keep reading here.—KW

Do you work in healthcare or have information about the industry that we should know? Email Kristine at [email protected]. For completely confidential conversations, ask Kristine for her number on Signal.

Makes patients say “yay!” Remixed clichés aside, delivering a top-notch patient experience through social media interactions and DMs is crucial to any endeavor in the healthcare industry—especially if you’re an innovative provider.

So, how to simplify patient engagement? Say hello to Hootsuite, the social media management tool that’s revolutionizing healthcare communication. Their tools let you take control of ALL social media engagements in…drumroll, pls …ONE PLACE.

Even better? Not only does Hootsuite help you stay HIPAA compliant, but it also offers tons of other features so you can address issues before they blow up and protect your brand. We’re talkin’ collaboration tools, automation integrations, success metrics, you name it.

Get rid of social headaches: See Hootsuite in action.

On Fridays, we schedule our rounds with Healthcare Brew readers. Want to be featured in an upcoming edition? Click here to introduce yourself.

This week’s Making Rounds spotlights Bert Witherspoon, an emergency medical services (EMS) coordinator at the Dallas-based health system Medical City Healthcare, which is part of Nashville-based HCA Healthcare. Witherspoon talked about his work promoting his hospital’s service lines (how hospitals group the types of services they offer, like oncology or cardiology), and the healthcare trends he’s least and most optimistic about and why.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

How would you describe your specific job to someone who doesn’t work in healthcare?

My main responsibilities include promotion over the four big service lines that we offer at our hospital, which are burn, trauma, ECMO [extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, a type of life support], and stroke. What I do is go out to other healthcare entities and promote and do outreach for those service lines. A lot of the outreach is making the other healthcare entities understand all the services we offer, what we can do for their patients, how they can get patients to us, and how we can help the continuity of care.

What healthcare trend are you most optimistic about and why?

More healthcare surgical procedures are moving to the outpatient setting. Physicians often take surgical cases to hospitals, which drives up the overall cost of healthcare. By providing the surgeons an efficient, expedient service, they can better serve their patient populations and reduce the cost of healthcare industrywide. The interesting part about that is that hospitals typically get paid a lot more for the same surgeries than ambulatory surgery centers do, and because of that, the operating margin at a surgery center is usually a lot less.

Keep reading here.—MA

Do you work in healthcare or have information about the industry that we should know? Email Maia at [email protected]. For completely confidential conversations, ask Maia for her number on Signal.

Today’s top healthcare reads.

Stat: Pharmaceutical companies are distributing more than $50 billion to localities in opioid settlement payouts. (NPR)

Quote: “We view this new generation of weight management medications as a significant inflection point in the treatment of clinically significant obesity.”—Gary Foster, chief scientific officer for WeightWatchers, on the company’s acquisition of weight loss management platform Sequence (Healthcare Brew)

Read: An abortion clinic in North Dakota moved to Minnesota after the state banned the procedure. (Politico)

Learn: Arm your best employees with the tools they need to lead. The Brew’s New Manager Bootcamp can shape them into the leaders they’re meant to be. Click here to secure seats now.

See it all: Take control of all your social media messages and comments. Hootsuite helps you stay HIPAA compliant while resolving patient messages and tracking engagement. See how it’s done.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}