Medical Economics: Private equity's booming interest in healthcare

The Illinois College of Osteopathic Medicine at The Chicago School welcomed its first class of 91 students in July, with mental health built into all four years of training. Medical Economics spoke with John Lucas, D.O., and Michele Nealon, Psy.D., about whole-person care, burnout and the stigma physicians face in seeking help.

The top news stories in medicine this week.

CMS' proposed cuts to physician fees focus on the operating room. For the primary care physicians managing recovery after surgery, the real gap is much larger.

Health care was the only one of five sectors to cut spending commitments this spring, falling 2.8% as hospitals faced rising supply costs and physicians awaited the final 2027 Medicare fee schedule, Coupa's Business Spend Index found.

It's shared savings season and the check has arrived. Now how do physicians divide it up fairly?

An OpenAI agent's unauthorized trip through an Australian Medicare data portal is a preview of the risks physicians take on as autonomous AI moves into prior authorization, billing and scheduling, and of what practices should demand from the vendors deploying it.

Adding a brief safety reminder cut potentially harmful clinical choices by large language models from 16.6% to 10.1% across more than 10 million responses, but researchers say it doesn't replace physician oversight.

Urban Institute analysis finds 26% of insured adults owe medical debt, with hospitals the largest source