Many hospitals have panic buttons—on walls, under desks, maybe even on an app. The problem? If you’re actively being attacked, you probably can’t reach it.

This is where small, portable buttons from companies like Cognosos, Silent Beacon, or Roar for Good come in. Because, unfortunately, odds are, someone in your healthcare facility will be attacked.

A survey by nurse’s union National Nurses United found that about 80% of 914 nurses reported they had experienced some form of verbal or physical violence on the job in 2023. In 2021 and 2022, the healthcare and social services sectors accounted for 72.8% of over 40,000 workplace violence cases in private industry that required workers to take time off, change duties, or transfer to another role, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“It’s a shame that violence is seen as part of the job,” Yasmine Mustafa, co-founder and CEO of Roar, told Healthcare Brew. “It shouldn’t be this way.”

Read more about the impact of portable panic buttons here.—CC

As AI usage continues to rise in healthcare, Philips and Mass General Brigham (MGB) announced a new partnership on Feb. 20 that may help clinicians respond to patient needs faster by using real-time health data.

The global tech company and Massachusetts-based health system are teaming up to improve care with a platform that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to pull data from medical devices and quickly give it back to providers.

Providers regularly use medical devices like ventilators to monitor patients’ vitals. Philips offers its Capsule Medical Device Information Platform that collects and stores data on a continuous basis from medical devices—whether they’re Philips devices or not—including lab results and other standard health information typically found in an electronic medical record.

Learn more about how this new platform could help providers.—CM

Welcome back to Signed and Scrubbed, a monthly roundup of hospital deals and bankruptcies.

With consistent M&As between hospitals and ongoing financial challenges leading to bankruptcies, Healthcare Brew is here to keep you in the loop.

In our second edition, we’ve compiled news we took note of in February 2025. Here’s the rundown.

The Bellevue Hospital. On Feb. 5, the 50-bed not-for-profit Bellevue Hospital in Toledo, Ohio, announced plans for Firelands Health to acquire the facility after it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The hospital was facing challenges “common to rural and independent US hospitals,” according to a press release from Sandusky, Ohio-based health system Firelands, including high operational costs, regulatory complexity, and difficulty accessing capital.

HCA Healthcare. Nashville-based HCA, one of the biggest hospital systems in the US with 186 facilities, completed its purchase of Florida’s Lehigh Regional Medical Center on Feb. 27. Leigh Regional was previously owned by Ontario, California-based Prime Healthcare. Jyric Sims, president of HCA Healthcare West Florida Division, said in a release that the deal is a “complimentary addition” to the system’s 17 hospitals in the area.

Check out the latest in hospital happenings here.—CM