Practice Management

Federal contracts, Medicare pilots and new state laws have pushed artificial intelligence from the edges of clinical practice into the middle of it.

Three health policy leaders argue that strengthening primary care payment isn't an attack on specialists — it's the fix the whole system needs.

Caroline Pearson of the Peterson Health Technology Institute says the way health care pays for clinical AI will decide whether it lowers costs or drives them up.

The top news stories in medicine this week.

Independent primary care is struggling under a payment system stacked against it

The CBO projects about 5.2 million adults will drop off Medicaid under the new rules that begin Jan. 1. Medical Economics spoke with Pear Suite co-founder and CEO Colby Takeda about the CHW workforce states are leaning on to reach them.

Kansas court records reviewed by The New York Times show the practice charged 18% annual interest, garnished bank accounts and pursued arrest warrants over balances as small as $101.

Rigid adherence thresholds in CMS's updated coverage decision leave doctors and suppliers guessing — and vulnerable patients at risk of losing a life-extending therapy

Health care economist Wayne Winegarden, Ph.D., says two decades of inflation-eroded Medicare payment, not corporate ownership, is what keeps pushing independent practices to sell.

Since April, confidence in Anthony Fauci has fallen to just 50%, while Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is unchanged at 38%, in a survey fielded during the Senate contempt vote.

WalletHub scored all 50 states and Washington, D.C., on 16 vaccination metrics. The bottom 10 holds the state with the highest kindergarten exemption rate in the country, and one whose kindergarten coverage is among the highest anywhere.

WalletHub scored all 50 states and Washington, D.C., on 16 vaccination metrics.

Defamation law protects a patient's harsh opinion but not a false assertion of fact, and HIPAA blocks a practice from answering either one with the facts.

Why credence-service marketing must make a physician's clinical judgment visible to patients, not just louder.

Physicians reveal which channels give the most medical misinformation to patients

Anthony Orsini, D.O., says most physicians were never trained for the conversation that follows a medical error, and that how they handle it often decides whether the case ends in court.

A U.K. review of 27 papers found the evidence on ambient scribe risks thinner than the American adoption curve.

Researchers verified thousands of fake reviews posted by providers and clinic staff and found them longer, more clinically detailed and better received than the real thing. HIPAA leaves physicians very little room to respond.

The top news stories in medicine this week.

With AI being used by both candidates and hiring managers, finding good employees in the resume pile can be challenging.

Digital mental health tools can widen access to care, but they also create clinical and administrative work — enrollment, data review, escalation, documentation — that rarely gets budgeted for before launch.

An Annenberg Public Policy Center survey of 1,904 adults found 87% are confident in their own doctor, nurse or other primary care physician, compared with 59% to 61% for the three federal health agencies.

Lawrence Casalino, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., argues that as medicine consolidates, physicians are increasingly treated as interchangeable parts, and that the damage shows up in the parts of care no quality program measures.

Side work — from telemedicine to expert witness testimony — can supplement income, ease burnout and build a second retirement plan for employed physicians.

AAFP issued its fall COVID-19, flu and RSV recommendations Wednesday, saying it coordinated with three other societies, while the coverage rules, counseling pay and registry logic behind them have not caught up.