HHS launches vaccine injury effort; Queens pharmacy owner charged in HIV drug scheme; AI chatbots unreliable on home BP monitors — Morning Medical Update

HHS launches vaccine injury effort, proposes pay for VAERS reports

Physicians could be paid for time spent filing reports of suspected vaccine injuries.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced Oct. 8 that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has proposed paying physicians for the time they spend reporting suspected vaccine-related injuries to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. Federal health IT standards will also require electronic health records to capture vaccine-related adverse events, and the National Institutes of Health opened a clinic on its Bethesda, Maryland, campus Oct. 5 to study and care for people with health problems after vaccination.

"We must listen to patients and families who report vaccine injuries — not dismiss or gaslight them," HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said. The American Medical Association said it supports "legitimate, ongoing vaccine safety monitoring" but that such research must be "free from political influence."

Paul Offit, M.D., a pediatrics professor at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, wrote that he believes the initiatives will undermine confidence in vaccines, Healthcare Dive reported.

Queens pharmacy owner charged in HIV drug kickback, buyback scheme

He was arrested boarding a one-way flight to Toronto, prosecutors said.

Miguel Baron, 62, of Yonkers, New York, was arrested at LaGuardia Airport as he attempted to board a one-way flight to Toronto and has been indicted on charges that he stole more than $31 million from Medicaid and the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced Oct. 7.

Prosecutors allege that from Jan. 1, 2023, to April 29, 2026, Baron paid Medicaid recipients cash kickbacks, often $150 to $250, to fill HIV prescriptions at Guardiola Pharmacy and Baron Specialty Pharmacy in Jackson Heights, Queens.

Baron allegedly bought the medications back for a few hundred dollars while the pharmacies collected thousands in reimbursement, then returned the drugs to inventory and dispensed them to other customers. He faces charges including grand larceny, health care fraud and money laundering, and a civil asset forfeiture action seeks more than $95 million. The charges are accusations, and Baron is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.

AI chatbots unreliable on validated home BP monitors

Gemini scored highest, but retesting often produced a different answer.

Four popular artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots had trouble identifying which home blood pressure monitors are validated, according to a preliminary study presented Oct. 8 at the American Heart Association (AHA) Hypertension Scientific Sessions 2026.

Researchers in Canada asked Google Gemini, OpenAI's ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity AI about 324 monitors. Gemini answered correctly 86% to 91% of the time depending on how questions were phrased, while the others ranged from about 63% to 83%.

All four were less accurate at identifying validated monitors than unvalidated ones, and retesting often produced a different answer. "We found that most AI tools performed only slightly better than if you had flipped a coin for each question," said Anna Soriano, M.D., an internal medicine resident at the University of Montreal.

The findings are preliminary and have not been peer reviewed. The AHA has the news release.