Analyzing U.S. health care for the better; voting on physician pay; AI vs. brain tumors — Morning Medical Update

New Vision for health care

You already know what the U.S. health care system looks like. What should it look like? The Commonwealth Fund hopes to craft answers through two major new programs. New Vision for the U.S. Health Care System at large and SHIFT — State Health Innovation for Transformation in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, Pennsylvania and Texas — launched this spring. Fund President and primary care physician Joseph Betancourt, M.D., explains.

Who says what you get paid?

California voters in November will decide on a ballot issue that could cap pay for physicians, nurses and other health care leaders. The statewide ballot initiative has qualified for a vote, and the California Medical Association says the bill has potential to push physicians out of a state already facing patient access issues due to clinician shortages. “This irresponsible measure will erode quality care and strip access to care for millions,” CMA President René Bravo, M.D. said in this explainer. “It will drive physicians and health care leaders out of the state and deter caregivers from practicing in our communities when we are already struggling to meet Californians’ needs due to severe shortages of specialists.”

AI in medicine: setting sights on brain tumors

Brain tumors are the latest medical condition to be studied by artificial intelligence (AI) programs, under the watchful eyes of Mayo Clinic researchers. The AI deep learning models were able to classify meningiomas, the most common type of brain tumor in adults. The program did it using the same type of tissue images already widely used in clinical care. "This is one of the many studies where we can harness the strength of digital pathology by capturing the last two decades of genomic and molecular knowledge into AI algorithms," Gelareh Zadeh, M.D., Ph.D., chair of the Department of Neurologic Surgery at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, said in an accompanying news release. The technology could be used to augment detection without DNA testing that is costly and not available in many hospitals.