Austin Littrell

The top news stories in medicine today.

Dolly Parton, who died Aug. 25, 2026, at 80, funded research at Vanderbilt, a women's health center in her home county and the Knoxville children's hospital that bears her name.

Two-thirds of physicians expect AI fluency to boost their earnings, according to Doximity's 2026 physician compensation report. Liability, reimbursement and a contested new JAMA paper all sit between that expectation and a bigger paycheck.

The top news stories in medicine today.

An analysis of 3.6 million patient portal messages found that greetings, length and punctuation helped determine who got a reply from their own physician.

Three counseling codes took effect Jan. 1 for vaccine visits that end without a shot. CMS will not pay for them and neither will most private payers.

The top news stories in medicine this week.

Insurers pledged six fixes to prior authorization in June 2025. A year later, only 24% of physicians say denials are getting the specialty-matched review that was promised first.

The top news stories in medicine today.

The top news stories in medicine today.

Inovalon surveyed more than 370 revenue cycle leaders in February 2026 about how prior authorization actually runs inside their organizations. The numbers say the process has barely modernized.

A JAMA Network Open study of nearly 175 million U.S. adults found 68.6% view immediately released results first — many don't understand what they read.

Seventy-nine percent of independent practice leaders say technology is what keeps them independent. Only 64% trust the tools they already have. Veradigm's Aaron Ledbetter explains what sits inside that gap, and why a denied claim still takes one to two weeks to reach the physician it belongs to.

The top news stories in medicine this week.

Jay Bregman of Andel says direct-to-employer purchasing takes prior authorization out of the prescription entirely, but the price a patient gets is tied to an employer's willingness to keep paying.

The top news stories in medicine today.

A JAMA analysis of nearly 250,000 board-certified internists puts hard numbers on how much underserved patient care rests on physicians born outside the U.S., just as visa policy tightens around them.

A new model of 5,778 physicians sorts every combination of hometown, medical school and residency into four tiers of rural practice.

The top news stories in medicine today.

The top news stories in medicine today.

The order sorts childhood immunizations into three categories, calls for separate visits and points the attorney general at state exemption laws.

Beyond the MMR split, the order presses states to adopt a narrower vaccine list and directs the attorney general to challenge exemption limits.

Patients read normalizing language as a signal that treatment isn't recommended, new research finds.

Shawntea Gordon of Atlas & Perpetua Healthcare Consulting says the cost most practices cut first is usually the one that was never the problem.

AAFP President Sarah C. Nosal, M.D., says family physicians should work from the academy's vaccine schedule and that the counseling required to explain it is time practices aren't paid for.

The top news stories in medicine this week.

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.