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

April 1, 2023 Vera

Nicolas Ortega for forbes

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

Medicaid expansion, SAVE Act, CON in NC health care bill

June 18, 2022 Vera

NC Senate leader Phil Berger, left, and Gov. Roy Cooper, right, have disagreed for years over Medicaid expansion in North Carolina. But that may be changing as the Senate plans to vote on it on June 1, 2022.

Julia Wall / Travis Long

RALEIGH

Doctors and hospitals have spent years pushing for Medicaid expansion in North Carolina. But now that Republican leaders have proposed a bill that would do just that, some are now either lukewarm on the bill or even actively opposed.

In large part, that’s because the bill also contains a number of other health care policy changes that threaten to upend other parts of the medical industry.

Chip Baggett is CEO of the North Carolina Medical Society, an influential lobbying group for doctors. He said they still support Medicaid expansion, but they oppose the way the legislature is currently proposing that it happen — namely, with so many unrelated policy changes tacked on.

“It’s all muddied up,” he said.

The opposition from some outside groups to parts of the bill hasn’t stopped the bill from quickly moving forward at the legislature, at least for now. The Senate backed the measure nearly unanimously Wednesday in the first of two votes.

If approved, the federal government might pay North Carolina $1.5 billion, similar to a signing bonus — plus 90% of the costs of covering uninsured North Carolinians, an estimated $8 billion per year.

Gov. Roy Cooper and other Democrats have long clamored for Medicaid expansion. Republicans in North Carolina have remained largely opposed to it even as GOP-led states elsewhere approved it in recent years. But that has now changed, at least in the N.C. Senate. And while powerful Republicans like Senate leader Phil Berger have changed their position to support Medicaid expansion, it’s also clear that they intend to use the bill to chip away at other rules and regulations in the health care industry.

What’s in the bill?

Industry groups including Baggett’s say some of the various rules and regulations that the bill targets are useful to improve safety in health care settings, or reduce costs.

But critics of those rules — who include, importantly, powerful Republicans who are now supporting Medicaid expansion tied to the other changes — dismiss those claims. They say the industry complaints are really just about special interests looking out for themselves.

“Nobody likes to be knocked off the top and

Added 10 Minutes of Every day Exercise Could Help you save 110,000 U.S. Lives Each year | Healthiest Communities Health and fitness News

February 1, 2022 Vera

By Steven Reinberg HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Jan. 25, 2022 (HealthDay News) — Americans, get up out of that chair and get transferring.

If absolutely everyone amongst 40 and 85 several years of age had been lively just 10 minutes extra a day, it could help you save additional than 110,000 U.S. life a year, a big review experiences.

“Our projections are centered on an added 10 minutes of reasonable to vigorous physical action,” reported guide researcher Pedro Saint-Maurice of the Metabolic Epidemiology Branch at the U.S. Nationwide Most cancers Institute in Bethesda, Md. “If the stroll is brisk, it counts.”

And added exercising gains all people — white, Black, Asian and Hispanic, males and girls, the investigators observed.

For the research, the scientists examined details from much more than 4,800 middle-aged and elderly older people who were section of a govt health and fitness and diet research concerning 2003 and 2006. For seven days, members wore screens to history their action. The researchers then combed nationwide loss of life info to see how quite a few had died by the stop of 2015.

The upshot: Physical exercise compensated off huge time.

Incorporating 10 minutes of workout decreased participants’ possibility of demise about the period by 7% 20 additional minutes reduced threat by 13% and an excess fifty percent-hour of moderate to vigorous exercise slashed the risk of dying by 17%, the findings showed.

In other phrases, an more 20 minutes of exercising could reduce nearly 210,000 fatalities a yr, and 30 much more minutes could head off far more than 270,000 fatalities, the study authors said.

Dr. David Katz — president of the Correct Overall health Initiative, a nonprofit that promotes nutritious dwelling as the very best way to prevent disorder — reviewed the research conclusions.

Katz observed that the review will not create induce-and-impact evidence that more work out stops premature death. But, he extra, “even a part of these advantage would be of terrific public overall health relevance.”

When the study did not examine particular causes of dying, Saint-Maurice noted that some of the most widespread types in the United States — heart disease, diabetic issues and some cancers — “could be prevented in grownups who are extra lively.”

The U.S. Government’s Bodily Action Suggestions for People in america suggests:

At least 150 minutes a week of reasonable-depth aerobic action 75 minutes of vigorous aerobics or a

Arizona Privatized Prison Health Care to Save Money. But at What Cost?

November 2, 2021April 12, 2022 Vera

In 2017, Walter Jordan wrote a memo to a federal judge from the Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence. “Notice of Impending Death,” it said in a shaky hand.

Jordan told the judge that Arizona corrections officials and Corizon Health, the state prison system’s private health care contractor at that time, delayed treating his cancer for so long that he would be “lucky to be alive for 30 days.” Jordan, 67, had a common form of skin cancer that is rarely life-threatening if caught early, but said he experienced memory loss and intense pain from botched care. Other men in his unit were also denied treatment, he wrote, “all falling, yelling, screaming of pain.”

Jordan was dead eight days later.

Reviewing his medical records later, Dr. Todd Wilcox, a physician hired by lawyers for the state’s prisoners, agreed that Jordan’s death was likely preventable. Corizon’s treatment of Jordan’s “excruciating needless pain,” was “the opposite of how cancer pain should be managed,” he said.

Wilcox will take the stand in a landmark trial that begins Monday in Phoenix, the latest chapter in an almost decade-long struggle to determine whether Arizona’s prisoners are getting the basic health care they are entitled to under the law.

The trial pits Arizona against the people held in its prisons, who argue in a class-action lawsuit that the medical services they receive are so poor, they constitute cruel and unusual punishment. The state’s current health care contractor, Centurion, is the latest in a string of companies that have failed to pass muster with the courts.

None of the companies have been named as defendants in the lawsuit, because, the claimants say, the state is ultimately responsible for their care. The suit was originally filed in 2012, shortly before private contractors took over Arizona’s prison medical services. But whether privatization can provide decent care is one of the biggest issues looming over the trial.

The Arizona Department of Corrections declined to comment on pending litigation. Centurion of Arizona and Corizon, based in Tennessee, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Arizona is one of around two dozen states that use a private, for-profit contractor to provide prison medical care, and almost all have been sued. But a trial is rare, as most states settle to avoid this kind of exhaustive public scrutiny.

Health care in Arizona prisons is “grossly inadequate,” the prisoners have said in

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

What’s in the bill?

_By_{Katie Jennings}_and_{Rashi Shrivastava}_{, Forbes Staff}