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The cyberattack on a unit of UnitedHealth Group鈥檚 Optum division is the worst on the health care industry in U.S. history, hospitals say. Providers struggling to get paid for care say the response by the insurer and the Biden administration has been inadequate.
A mathematical model designed to direct spending of opioid settlement funds is at the center of a debate over whether to invest in technology to guide long-term decisions or focus on the immediate needs of people in addiction.
Lawmakers in Congress and state legislatures are scrambling to react to the ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court that frozen embryos created for in vitro fertilization are legally children. Abortion opponents are divided among themselves, with some supporting full 鈥減ersonhood鈥 for fertilized eggs, while others support IVF as a moral way to have children. Rachel Cohrs of Stat, Riley Griffin of Bloomberg News, and Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins University schools of nursing and public health and Politico Magazine join 吃瓜不打烊鈥 Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Also this week, Rovner interviews University of Pittsburgh law professor Greer Donley, who explains how a 150-year-old anti-vice law that鈥檚 still on the books could be used to ban abortion nationwide. Plus, for 鈥渆xtra credit,鈥 the panelists suggest health policy stories they read this week that they think you should read, too.
Change Healthcare, a firm recently bought by insurance giant UnitedHealth Group, reportedly suffered a cyberattack. The company processes 14 billion transactions annually, including payments and requests for insurance authorizations.
Lawmakers and regulators are trying to understand how AI is changing health care and how it should be regulated. The industry fears overreach.
When bankers and investors flocked to San Francisco for the largest gathering of health care industry investors, the buzz was all about artificial intelligence, the next hit weight-loss drug, and new opportunities to make money through nonprofit hospitals.
Artificial intelligence software to aid radiologists in detecting problems or diagnosing cancer has been moving rapidly into clinical use, where it shows great promise. But it鈥檚 a turnoff for some patients asked to pay out-of-pocket for technology that鈥檚 not quite ready for prime time.
For the patient, it was a quick and inexpensive virtual appointment. Why it cost 10 times what she expected became a mystery.
A rural South Dakota medic said using an ambulance video system to communicate with a doctor gave him peace of mind as he treated a patient who was seriously injured when gored by a bison.
Software sifts through millions of medical records to match patients with similar diagnoses and characteristics and then predicts what kind of care an individual will need and for how long. New federal rules will ensure human experts are part of the process.
Doctors say billing for email consultations reduces message volume and gives them more free time. The increasingly prevalent practice has also raised fears about negative impacts to patient care.
To contain the opioid crisis, health and law enforcement agencies have turned to technology to monitor doctor and patient prescription data. Experts have raised questions about how these systems work and worry about their accuracy and potential biases. Some patients and doctors say they鈥檙e being unfairly targeted.
Consumers should know that this type of fraud can happen, whether from a large-scale breach or theft of an individual鈥檚 data. The result could be thousands of dollars in medical bills.
U.S. hospitals have seen a record number of cyberattacks over the past few years. Getting hacked can cost a hospital millions of dollars, expose patient data, and even jeopardize patient care.
The National Eating Disorders Association鈥檚 help line has seen demand climb to unsustainable levels since the beginning of the covid pandemic, with more people reporting severe mental health problems, the nonprofit says. But staffers worry this chatbot may make things worse.
The Department of Health and Human Services is tasked with monitoring denials both by Obamacare health plans and those offered through employers and insurers. As insurers鈥 denials become more common, they sometimes defy not just medical standards of care but sheer logic. Why hasn鈥檛 the agency fulfilled its assignment?
Given a dire shortage of human behavioral health providers in the U.S., it may prove tempting for insurers to offer up apps and chatbots to meet the federal mental health parity requirement. But artificial intelligence, by definition fake, can鈥檛 master the empathic flow between patient and doctor that鈥檚 central to therapy.
Giant corporations like Microsoft and Google, plus many startups, are eyeing health care profits from programs based on artificial intelligence.
The computer program, designed in 1996 to be a secure location for foster children鈥檚 medical and school records and histories of neglect and abuse, is older than Google 鈥 and has had far fewer updates.
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