The top news stories in medicine this week.
Austin Littrell
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Austin Littrell is associate editor of Medical Economics.
Articles by Austin Littrell
Physicians head into this back-to-school season with more than one immunization schedule in circulation, rising exemption rates and new counseling codes that payers are covering unevenly.
Joanne Frederick of Government Market Strategies argues the fix for runaway health care costs turned out worse than the problem it solved.
The top news stories in medicine today.
The 51-44 vote ends a yearlong vacancy atop one of the nation's top health agencies.
Advanced practice providers have moved from stopgap to permanent staff, and physicians are absorbing the change in patient acuity, productivity benchmarks and rural coverage.
WalletHub ranked all 50 states and the District of Columbia on 44 measures of cost, access and outcomes.
New Aflac survey data land as ChatGPT Health, Claude for Healthcare and Amazon's Health AI reach consumers at scale.
WalletHub ranked all 50 states and the District of Columbia on 44 measures of cost, access and outcomes.
Nearly half of health care organizations say patient access improved this year. Fewer than one in five patients agree. Experian Health's chief operating officer explains what practices are measuring that patients are not, and why a missing cost estimate now keeps patients out of the exam room entirely.
The top news stories in medicine this week.
The 13-10 vote sends Trump's third CDC pick to the full Senate, where a confirmation vote may not come until September.
Clinics and physician practices accounted for almost 30% of health care Chapter 11 filings in the first half of 2026, the one subsector climbing while the rest trended flat or down, according to a new Gibbins Advisors report.
A pediatrician at the center of the country's largest cyclospora outbreak on why the official case counts are almost certainly too low, and what most labs aren't looking for.
Gary Jacobs argues the payment system is what makes small practices unsustainable, and that the physicians who wait it out usually end up selling to a hospital rather than choosing their own exit.
RAND researchers put the same questions to 15 primary care physicians employed by health systems and 15 independent ones. Neither model came out ahead on all five findings.
The top news stories in medicine today.
Medicare rates, prior authorization, telehealth and Medicaid coverage all change between Sept. 14, 2026, and Jan. 1, 2028.
Another conversion factor cut is on the table for 2027, and MGMA's Anders Gilberg breaks down why budget neutrality keeps forcing cuts in one specialty to pay for another and what the end of MIPS means for physicians.
The top news stories in medicine this week.
The corporate medicine crackdown is hitting the wrong target, says economist Wayne Winegarden, Ph.D.
Health care economist Wayne Winegarden, Ph.D., argues that two decades of inflation-eroded Medicare payment, not corporate ownership or management services organizations, is what is pushing independent practices to sell.
Female physicians leave clinical practice at a median age of 49, compared with age 64 for their male colleagues, and the practice patterns patients value most may be part of what drives them out.
A framework published in npj Digital Medicine ranks patient care and staff experience alongside price, and says a health system that cannot score a tool across all five domains may not be ready to buy it.
Overhead swallows roughly 60% of the typical practice's revenue, and most of it sits in a few line items. These nine moves pull real money off that number without touching the exam room — and the biggest lever is the one most owners are slowest to open.
The top news stories in medicine today.
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