Medicare's Ambulatory Specialty Model scores specialists one by one on episode costs and quality, with no group average to absorb a weak result.

Physician groups in risk contracts often learn what they owe months or years after the fact. Medical Economics spoke with Najib Jai, M.D., MBA, chief operating officer of Arbital Health, about why settlements turn into disputes and how actuarial AI tracks contract performance while the year is still underway.

Early wins with ambient AI scribes, shared control over clinical decision support tools and incremental pilots can build the trust needed for a decades-long transformation.

An eHealth open enrollment survey also found 58% of insured adults delayed care over costs, and two-thirds of those who used AI for medical advice say it was sometimes wrong.

Almost 70% of consumers will abandon AI customer service after two failures, a recent survey found.

As AI vendors tighten token and credit caps, staff who turn to free chatbots can expose patient data to vendors with no business associate agreement. Eight steps can keep practices protected.

The top news stories in medicine this week.

An AI system that simulates a panel of physicians reached the correct diagnosis in about 80% of test cases, compared with 36% to 47% for generalist physicians, though researchers caution the results come from a controlled, text-only benchmark rather than real-world practice.