Tag: doctors

Protecting reproductive health and fitness treatment usually means defending doctors

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The harm to sufferers and our nation’s community well being triggered by previous year’s U.S. Supreme Court docket selection in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Overall health Organization proceeds to expand and worsen. That is since lawmakers, condition officers and other 3rd functions are trying to find to exert their affect into the individual-medical doctor partnership, impede obtain to proof-dependent reproductive wellness solutions, and criminalize treatment centered on political ideology in its place of science.

Just one instance of this interference, in a case that became a political flashpoint in the wake of the Dobbs ruling final summertime, has ongoing to play out. The case requires Caitlin Bernard, MD, MS, an Indianapolis-dependent ob-gyn who was qualified by Indiana Legal professional General Todd Rokita past summer following she offered abortion care to a 10-year-aged Ohio lady whose pregnancy was the end result of rape. At the time, an Ohio regulation banning abortion was in impact, which resulted in the girl’s referral to Dr. Bernard in Indiana by an Ohio physician. The Ohio ban has since been place on keep.

Rokita suggested on Television that Bernard experienced designed the whole detail up and that there was no 10-year-old Ohio rape target. When subsequent details proved if not, he then claimed that Dr. Bernard had divulged private client details and experienced unsuccessful to follow state reporting guidelines. Rokita subsequently submitted an administrative grievance in opposition to Dr. Bernard with the Indiana Health-related Licensing Board—even though information exhibit that Dr. Bernard complied with reporting prerequisites established by both equally the Indiana Office of Health and the Indiana Office of Little one Providers.

Associated Coverage

Judge’s ruling on mifepristone has no basis in medical science

Much more lately, a judge ruled that Rokita induced irreparable hurt to Dr. Bernard’s name and professional standing by publicly talking about his office’s investigation of her steps. Undertaking so violated Indiana regulation, according to a Marion County (Indiana) choose, in light of Rokita’s authorized obligation to sustain the confidentiality of an ongoing probe.

At a daylong point out licensing board listening to yesterday, AMA Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs Chair Peter A. Schwartz, MD testified on Dr. Bernard’s behalf. He affirmed that Dr. Bernard did not share any distinctive identifiers or guarded wellness information about her client and said that she achieved all of her ethical obligations “extremely nicely.” 

Dr. Schwartz further more observed that presented her distinctive

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ChatGPT Won’t Fix Healthcare, But It Might Save Doctors Some Time

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In a healthcare industry still burdened with 1960s technology, generative AI may offer a little relief — but companies are still working to overhaul a broken system that’s keeping doctors and nurses more focused on paperwork than patients.

By Katie Jennings and Rashi Shrivastava, Forbes Staff

Every week, Eli Gelfand, chief of general cardiology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, wastes a lot of time on letters he doesn’t want to write — all of them to insurers disputing his recommendations. A new drug for a heart failure patient. A CAT scan for a patient with chest pain. A new drug for a patient with stiff heart syndrome. “We’re talking about appeal letters for things that are life-saving,” says Gelfand, who is also an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School.

So when OpenAI’s ChatGPT began making headlines for generally coherent artificial intelligence-generated text, Gelfand saw an opportunity to save some time. He fed the bot some basic information about a diagnosis and the medications he’d prescribed (leaving out the patient’s name) and asked it to write an appeal letter with references to scientific papers.

ChatGPT gave him a viable letter — the first of many. And while the references may sometimes be wrong, Gelfand told Forbes the letters require “minimal editing.” Crucially, they have cut the time he spends writing them down to a minute on average. And they work.

Gelfand has used ChatGPT for some 30 appeal letters, most of which have been approved by insurers, he says. But he’s under no illusion that ChatGPT or the AI that powers it is going to save the U.S. healthcare system anytime soon. “It’s basically making my life a little easier and hopefully getting the patients the medications they need at a higher rate,” Gelfand says. “This is a workaround solution for a problem that shouldn’t really exist.”

That problem: The U.S. spends more money on healthcare administration than any other country. In 2019, around a quarter of the $3.8 trillion spent on healthcare went to administrative issues like the ones bemoaned by Gelfand. It’s estimated around $265 billion of that was “wasteful” — unnecessary expenditures necessitated by the antiquated technology that undergirds the U.S. healthcare system. Gelfand can use a chatbot to electronically generate an appeal letter. But he has to fax it to the insurer. And that encapsulates the challenge

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How Americans View Use of AI in Health Care and Medicine by Doctors and Other Providers

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Yet many see promise for artificial intelligence to help issues of bias in medical care

Pew Research Center conducted this study to understand Americans’ views of artificial intelligence (AI) and its uses in health and medicine. For this analysis, we surveyed 11,004 U.S. adults from Dec. 12-18, 2022.

Everyone who took part in the survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way, nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology.

Here are the questions used for this report, along with responses, and its methodology.

This is part of a series of surveys and reports that look at the increasing role of AI in shaping American life. For more, read “Public Awareness of Artificial Intelligence in Everyday Activities” and “How Americans view emerging uses of artificial intelligence, including programs to generate text or art.”

A new Pew Research Center survey explores public views on artificial intelligence (AI) in health and medicine – an area where Americans may increasingly encounter technologies that do things like screen for skin cancer and even monitor a patient’s vital signs.

The survey finds that on a personal level, there’s significant discomfort among Americans with the idea of AI being used in their own health care. Six-in-ten U.S. adults say they would feel uncomfortable if their own health care provider relied on artificial intelligence to do things like diagnose disease and recommend treatments; a significantly smaller share (39%) say they would feel comfortable with this.

One factor in these views: A majority of the public is unconvinced that the use of AI in health and medicine would improve health outcomes. The Pew Research Center survey, conducted Dec. 12-18, 2022, of 11,004 U.S. adults finds only 38% say AI being used to do things like diagnose disease and recommend treatments would lead to better health outcomes for patients generally, while 33% say it would lead to worse outcomes and 27% say it wouldn’t make much difference.

These findings come as public attitudes toward AI continue to take shape, amid the ongoing adoption of AI technologies across industries and the accompanying national conversation about the benefits and risks that AI applications

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Racist Doctors and Organ Intruders: Why So Several Black People Distrust the Wellness Treatment Method

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Discrimination, deficiency of obtain, distrust and mistreatment are not exclusive to Black People in america Latinos and other minority groups experience it, far too. Poor men and women generally wait around longer for even worse treatment in underfunded, understaffed — and typically de facto racially segregated — community hospitals and clinics than richer, better-insured persons. And they know it.

Escalating up in Detroit, Michael Winans, now in his early 40s, was “too hectic obtaining by” to pay back focus to a syphilis experiment that ended right before he was born. But distrust of the professional medical institution flowed in his family. His grandmother survived a stroke but died through regimen observe-ups the spouse and children suspected sub-par treatment. Later on, his mom hesitated when she needed fibroid surgical procedures. When she at last went in, she ended up with an surprising hysterectomy. Winans appreciates that occasionally happens, that the significantly less invasive operation is not usually more than enough. But was it necessary for his mother? He miracles.

“When you develop up in a predominantly Black town like Detroit, you can go much of your lifestyle without definitely interacting with another person of yet another race,” he claims. “If the initial time is when you have a overall health problem … you talk to your self, ‘Does this man or woman treatment for me? Or see me as a range?’ It’s an additional level of potential trepidation or concern.”

The Black American practical experience is acquiring distinct scrutiny right now, alongside with hopes for adjust. Some of the men and women interviewed for this tale ended up far more optimistic than other individuals about progress. But none observed the wellness method as shade-blind.

“People see that I’m Black in advance of they recognize — if they ever get to the point that they see — that I have a PhD.,” states Cara James, who ran the Workplace of Minority Health at the Facilities for Medicare and Medicaid Services throughout the Obama administration. James, who also previously led get the job done on racial disparities at the Kaiser Loved ones Basis, is now the president and CEO of Grantmakers in Health, which works with foundations and philanthropies to strengthen wellbeing treatment.

Matters may have gotten far better since the days when James would thoroughly decide on which go well with to put on as she accompanied her grandmother, an agricultural employee

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Medicare Pay Cuts Will Hurt Seniors’ Care, Doctors Argue

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[UPDATED at 11 a.m. ET for news developments.]

Doctors are urging Congress to call off cuts scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1 in the reimbursements they receive from Medicare.

In what has become an almost yearly ritual, physician groups are arguing that patients will have greater difficulty finding doctors who accept Medicare if lawmakers allow the pay cuts to happen.

A more than 4,000-page draft government spending bill released by lawmakers early Tuesday morning proposed much smaller-than-planned cuts to Medicare payments. But the bill, which Congress hoped to pass by the weekend to keep the government funded and avert a shutdown, would not go as far as doctors wanted.

“Despite overwhelming bipartisan, bicameral support to stop the full Medicare physician payment cut, Congress failed once again to end the cycle of harmful Medicare cuts, showing a disregard for vulnerable seniors,” the Surgical Care Coalition, an organization representing surgeons and anesthesiologists, said in a statement.

The doctors’ lobbying campaign had gained traction on Capitol Hill. A bipartisan group of 115 House lawmakers rallied behind doctors in a letter to congressional leaders and President Joe Biden last week, urging them to prevent cuts that they argued would “only make a bad situation far worse” for Medicare patients.

In recent years, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services scheduled the pay cuts to offset the cost of increasing payments for underpaid services, like primary care. Physicians also stand to see reductions tied to broad cuts implemented by Congress in recent decades to try to control government spending.

Some Republicans have pushed to wait on passing the spending package until their party controls the House of Representatives next year and can have a greater say over what they call out-of-control spending. One priority of the incoming House Republican majority is curbing Social Security and Medicare, a federal health insurance program for people age 65 and older, among others.

“We’re mortgaging our kids’ futures,” Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, a Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, told reporters, referring to overall spending. “This is killing us from a financial standpoint. It’s got to stop.”

Despite concerns about ballooning government spending, for years doctors have been successful in delaying or softening proposed pay cuts, arguing that there would be dire consequences if the cuts kicked in.

Physicians carry a lot of political weight in Washington. The American Medical Association, the professional organization that represents and

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Northwest doctors say: Keep blood pressure in check with healthy lifestyle, testing at home

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Because it draws zero attention to itself, high blood pressure — the technical term is hypertension — seems to be the easiest to shrug off of all ongoing health conditions in American adults.

It’s symptomless. It’s sneaky. A trivial paper cut will cause you more pain and suffering than this important aspect of your health.

Nearly half of all American adults have high blood pressure, according to the American Heart Association, and many don’t even know it.

But hypertension doesn’t stay symptomless forever, according to Dr. Noreen Nazir, a preventive cardiologist at Oregon Health & Science University.

“In the early stages, you can have elevated numbers but no sustained symptoms,” Nazir said. “The body is trying to compensate. It can do this for a time but you may be on your way to developing symptoms and developing negative outcomes later on.”

Avoid ‘Holiday Heart’

The holiday season is when we tend to eat and drink with abandon. Doctors have a name for seasonally troubled cardiovascular systems: “holiday heart.” If you’re trying to keep your blood pressure in check despite holiday treats and peer pressure, try these tips:

  • Before you hit that party, snack healthily and include protein. You’ll be less inclined to gorge.
  • At the party, start with a glass of water. Delay and reduce alcohol.
  • Keep exercising. In addition to keeping your blood pressure better regulated, it’ll reduce stress and keep your spirits bright.
  • Stick with your meds. If you tend to forget, get a weekly pill organizer.
  • Be careful with over-the-counter cold and flu meds, which can raise blood pressure. Read labels. 

According to the American Heart Association, chronic hypertension — that is, blood pressure that stays too high for too long — increases one’s risk of heart attack, stroke and a host of other health problems, from heart and kidney disease to vision loss and sexual dysfunction.

“Most people experience very little symptoms until it’s too late,” said Dr. Richard Segal, an internal medicine specialist at Kaiser Permanente in Salem, Ore.

Heart disease is the No. 1 cause of death for adults in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Stroke is No. 5.

“Worldwide, raised blood pressure is estimated to cause 7.5 million deaths, about 12.8 percent of the total of all deaths,” according to the World Health Organization.

That’s why it’s important to get screened, understand what your numbers mean

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