Epic debuts instant prior authorization checks at 4 health systems. Ochsner Health, Froedtert ThedaCare Health, Denver Health and Summit Health are debuting the application programming interface, which Epic says should speed up preapprovals for medical items and services.

Two scopes, two cranes, one campus: Potain tower cranes support major hospital-campus build in Milwaukee. 30 June 2026, 07:29 * Two Potain tower cranes, the MD 559 and MD 569, support simultaneous construction projects at Froedtert Hospital's campus expansion in Milwaukee. * The MD 559 crane efficiently manages the six-story parking garage construction, reducing equipment footprint and enabling continuous workflow. * The MD 569 crane handles heavy lifts for the hospital expansion, including elevator and stair tower components, maintaining project pace with minimal staging. * Reynolds Rigging & Crane Service provides comprehensive crane planning, assembly, operation, and dismantling, ensuring seamless coordination and zero disruption to hospital operations. * Two Potain tower cranes are supporting distinct but coordinated construction efforts at Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee - a new parking structure, served by a Potain MD 559, and a hospital expansion, supported by a Potain MD 569. * Reynolds Rigging & Crane Service is delivering full in house planning, assembly, disassembly, and crane operations for both projects. Froedtert Hospital is undergoing a major campus expansion that includes a new six-story parking garage with four elevators, three stair towers and a skywalk that links to a new expansion of its main hospital building. With limited laydown area inside an active healthcare campus, the project's contractors chose Potain tower cranes to reduce their reliance on ground staging and minimize the site footprint. The overriding goal is to complete construction with zero disruption to hospital operations. Reynolds Rigging & Crane Service understood the importance and sequenced trucking, assembly, and dismantle to protect day-to-day hospital activity. The garage was designed, and its construction sequenced around a centrally placed Potain MD 559 so one crane could cover its footprint. This approach reduced the number of cranes and equipment on campus and simplified site circulation. Once the MD 559 was erected at the heart of the garage footprint, it became the workhorse of the project, supporting every stage of construction from early concrete work through finishing tasks. The 22 USt capacity crane is lifting and setting large precast planks, heavy rebar bundles, curtain wall frames, and site elements such as light poles and masonry, enabling crews to keep the build moving without introducing extra machines into the campus. When the structure is complete, the crane pad will be repurposed to house the snow-melt system, leaving no trace that the entire build had once revolved around its position. With a 900,000-square-foot footprint and multiple structural complexities, smaller cranes simply wouldn't have been able to meet the demands of the build. The MD 559 offered the reach and lifting capacity needed to maintain efficiency, safety, and productivity in a tight, high-traffic medical campus setting. Its design quality and performance have been a key factor in keeping the project on schedule. For the hospital expansion, a Potain MD 569 is handling demanding picks that would challenge a mobile crane. The 27.6 USt capacity crane managed 8 USt lifts for the elevator and stair towers, 4 USt bundles of reinforcing steel, and daily steel placements, all while maintaining level, stable lifts. Its ability to pull materials directly from the corners of the site keeps the addition on pace with minimal staging area, ensuring the new hospital wing and its skywalk connection advance smoothly within the constraints of the active campus. Reynolds plays the pivotal role of bringing both tower cranes to life on the Froedtert campus. The company handles all assembly and dismantling work in-house, providing location studies, engineered lift plans, trucking, and scheduling, as well as its own 7-axle mobile crane to erect the towers. Reynolds also supplied the operators who keep the cranes running day-to-day, and it coordinated closely with both general contractors to ensure the project stays on schedule. By managing every aspect of the lifting package internally, Reynolds delivered a seamless process that reduced handoffs, safeguarded hospital access, and ensured two major projects advanced in tandem. "Our job was to take complexity off the table. By handling assembly, dismantling, lift planning, trucking, and operators, we give both contractors a single point of accountability and the confidence their cranes would perform exactly as planned," said Nathanael Reynolds, Vice President, Reynolds Rigging & Crane Service.

Innovative program helps Milwaukee students graduate high school with medical certification. Six Milwaukee students are graduating from high school with a head start on a career in the medical field. The students, who hail from Rufus King High School, Marquette University High School, Golda Meir School and three other schools, recently completed a grant-funded K-12 Medical Assistant pathway program. The program was created through an innovative partnership by MedCerts, Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee and Froedtert Hospital. The students were honored during a graduation ceremony at the Ready Center, 518 W. Cherry St., on May 27. Jennifer Kolb, vice president of partnerships and workforce development at MedCert, said the students learned medical skills like how to test blood pressure, took classes such as human anatomy and got clinical hands-on experience at Froedtert Hospital. They participated in the pathway while still enrolled in their full-time classes. "They graduate from high school with their high school diploma and a certificate," Kolb said. "They could go work at hospitals, at clinics, at long-term care facilities; they could work in a variety of places." Kolb said Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee also provides support to students in the pathway with material needs like food and housing. After high school, some students plan to stay near and others are going far - but all are interested in pursuing a career in the medical field. Meet some of the graduates. AJ Egerson Alexander "AJ" Egerson, a senior at Marquette University High School, said he is passionate about mental health in his community. "In Black communities mental health often gets overlooked," Egerson said. He wants to make an impact by becoming a psychiatric nurse practitioner and opening his own clinic. "I saw (the medical pathway) as an opportunity to get my foot in the field," Egerson said. Egerson is moving south to attend the University of Alabama at Birmingham to get a bachelor's degree in nursing, where he can also earn his master's degree in psychiatric nursing at the same time. Before he leaves, Egerson will continue to work in the field this summer with Froedtert Hospital. Aubree Cathey Hearing about her grandma's experiences as an anesthesiologist for the Army made Rufus King High School senior Aubree Cathey want to follow in her footsteps into the medical field. "I really wanted to be in the operating room," she said. "But I don't have much of a steady hand." She saw the medical assistant pathway as an opportunity to get hands-on experience beyond job shadowing. She said she enjoyed meeting students from other Milwaukee schools and learning alongside a supportive community. Cathey will attend the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in the fall to pursue a degree in biology. She's also looking forward to playing on the school's tennis and softball teams. She said her school's campus clinic is hiring a medical assistant and the certification from the program sets her up well to apply. "I'm really excited to hopefully get into there," Cathey said. Maryan Mohamed Maryan Mohamed said the Medical Assistant pathway program taught her about ethics and laws in the medical field and showed her what it's like to work in a hospital. She said it took a lot of work to balance the rigors of the program with her other obligations. "Balancing high school, work and extracurricular activities while being at medical assistant school," Mohamed said. "It was hard juggling all of those at once." She said that throughout her time in the program her classmates helped motivate her when the work got hard. Mohamed plans to attend the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to pursue a degree in radiology. Alex Klaus is the education solutions reporter for the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and a corps member of Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. Report for America plays no role in editorial decisions in the NNS newsroom. Republish its articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license. Alex Klaus covers education and is a Report for America corps member. Previously, she covered Detroit K-12 schools for Chalkbeat Detroit. She's also reported for Outlier Media, Detroit Documenters and Bridge Detroit as a freelancer. She graduated from Wayne State University with a degree in urban studies and public history.