Sixty-five million older adults and people with disabilities have health insurance through the US Medicare program. However, high out-of-pocket costs, including premiums and cost sharing, make it difficult for many Medicare beneficiaries to afford care. One in 4 Medicare beneficiaries had an income of less than $21 000 per person in 2023 and 36% reported forgoing or delaying care due to cost concerns.¹ Beneficiaries from racial and ethnic minority groups and those with multiple chronic conditions or disabilities frequently report cost barriers, raising concerns that high costs may keep essential care out of reach for vulnerable individuals.^{1 [JAMA Network]}

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Artificial intelligence tools could help solve workforce challenges. Implementation, however, can be difficult, pushing organizations to consider less risky administrative and back-office tasks first. 

[Healthcare Dive]

LAS VEGAS — When the University of Illinois Hospital and Health Sciences System was testing an artificial intelligence-backed tool that drafts responses to messages, a patient misspelled the name of a medication, Karl Kochendorfer, chief health information officer, recalled during a panel at the HLTH conference last week.

The mistake led the AI to give side effects for a drug the patient wasn’t using when a nurse forgot to double-check the response.

Ultimately, it wasn’t a huge issue — they just needed to call the patient or send another message to issue a correction, he said. But it could have had serious implications for the tool.

“It almost killed the pilot. [...] And it happened on day one,” he said.

As healthcare grapples with how to safely implement AI, investors and health systems are first seeing promise adopting tools that automate administrative and back-office work, which could make a dent in provider burnout and pose fewer risks to patient care, experts said HLTH conference.

But the pressure is on to adopt the tech. Proponents argue AI could help solve healthcare’s significant workforce challenges: The nation faces a shortage of more than 100,000 critical healthcare workers in 2028, as the overall population ages and needs more care, according to a report by consultancy Mercer.

While AI could be transformative, the sector has to move with caution as it implements emerging tools, experts say. The stakes are high, as policymakers and experts have raised concerns about accuracy, bias and security. 

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Long COVID, also known as Post-COVID Conditions, was first reported anecdotally in April 2020 and has continued to cause significant suffering and disability in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.¹ The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines long COVID as "signs, symptoms, and conditions that continue or develop after acute COVID-19 infection" and notes that long COVID encompasses a wide range of symptoms that can last for weeks, months, or years.² The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) estimates that 6.9 percent of adults have ever had long COVID as of early 2023 and finds differences by sex, age group, race and ethnicity, and preexisting chronic conditions.³ Similarly, the 2022 National Health Interview Survey estimates that 6.9 percent of adults in the United States ever had long COVID, with differences observed by sex, age group, race and ethnicity, poverty status, and urbanicity.⁴ An analysis of the 2022 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System estimates that 6.4 percent of adults in the United States ever had long COVID and finds variation by state.^{5 [Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality]}

Highlights

• 13.7 percent reported ever having long COVID.
• Women were more likely than men to report ever having long COVID (16.5% vs. 10.5%).
• Adults aged 18-34 were less likely than all other age groups to report ever having long COVID (9.8% vs. 13.5%-17.9%).
• Adults living in high-income households were less likely to report ever having long COVID (11.0%) than those living in middle-income households (15.6%), low-income or near poor households (17.4%), and those living in poor households (17.2%).
• Adults living in a metropolitan statistical area reported lower rates of ever having long COVID than those living outside of a metropolitan statistical area (12.7% vs. 19.7%).

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Expanding vaccine use has the potential to reduce the administration of up to 2.5 billion doses of antimicrobials per year, making a significant contribution to the fight against antimicrobial resistance (AMR), one of the greatest public health challenges worldwide. [Medscape]

This information is included in a new World Health Organization (WHO) report on the subject, which estimated the potential impact of increases in immunization rates. The document emphasized that the role of vaccines in reducing AMR has not been fully recognized, even though vaccines can “train” the immune system to better defend against various pathogens before an infection begins or worsens.

“Vaccinated people will have fewer infections and thus will also be protected against potential complications from secondary infections that may trigger the use of antimicrobials or require admission to hospital,” the report stated.

WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, PhD, highlighted the importance of implementing preventive strategies.

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Two weeks after setting a nationwide deadline for removal of lead pipes, the Biden administration is imposing strict new limits on dust from lead-based paint in older homes and childcare facilities. [MedPage Today]

A final rule announced Thursday by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sets limits on lead dust on floors and window sills in pre-1978 residences and childcare facilities to levels so low they cannot be detected.

Paint that contains lead was banned in 1978, but more than 30 million American homes are believed to still contain it, including nearly 4 million homes where children under the age of 6 live. Lead paint can chip off when it deteriorates or is disturbed, especially during home remodeling or renovation.

"There is no safe level of lead," said Michal Freedhoff, PhD, EPA's assistant administrator for chemical safety and pollution prevention. The new rule will bring the U.S. "closer to eradicating lead-based paint hazards from homes and childcare facilities once and for all," she said.

The EPA estimates the new rule will reduce the lead exposures of up to 1.2 million people per year, including 178,000 to 326,000 children under age 6.

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Healthcare leaders will navigate the complex world of advancing health equity and providing stellar healthcare in an environment that has changed since the epic pandemic and with new leadership in the White House after the election. 

Join us for a thought-provoking discussion on what challenges lie ahead and how we approach them. Our speakers will share insights on what issues will be critical for us to address in the next four years and what it will take to meet expectations, advance health equity, reduce disparities, and thrive. 

Reserve your tickets here> 

Exhibit opportunities available* $1000 - more info here>

*Subject to terms and conditions. 

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Funding supports the White House Blueprint for Addressing the Maternal Health Crisis by investing in innovative state-based strategies
Rep. Robin Kelly, Co-Chair of the Congressional Maternity Care Caucus, Joins Announcement as Part of HRSA’s Latest Enhancing Maternal Health Initiative Convening 

Today, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), announced nearly $19 million in awards to 15 states to identify and implement innovative strategies to address the maternal health crisis. HRSA Deputy Administrator Jordan Grossman, joined by Congresswoman Robin Kelly (IL-02), Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus Health Braintrust and Co-chair of the bipartisan Maternity Care Caucus, announced these awards in Chicago, IL as part of HRSA’s latest state Enhancing Maternal Health Initiative convening. [HRSA]

HRSA announced the availability of this funding in December 2023 at a White House roundtable on innovation in maternal health convened by the Office of the Vice President Kamala Harris and the Domestic Policy Council in support of the White House Blueprint for Addressing the Maternal Health Crisis. 

“Supporting community solutions to the maternal mortality crisis means listening to moms and women with lived experience,” said HRSA Deputy Administrator Grossman. “At the Health Resources and Services Administration, we are proud to invest in our State Maternal Health Task Force initiative to create community tables across the country that are innovating and deploying community-driven solutions and strategies to advance women’s health.”

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Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul joined nearly two dozen colleagues this week to request the Supreme Court uphold an Affordable Care Act provision that guarantees access to preventative care. [ Health News Illinois ] 

The 24 attorneys general, led by Raoul, asked the justices in an amicus brief to reverse a lower court’s decision that struck down the law’s requirement for health plans to cover certain preventive services and treatments without charging out-of-pocket costs.

The brief argues that eliminating the provision could create a gap in health coverage that states could not fill due to federal law that prevents them from regulating certain insurance plans. State-level mandates, it argued, would not be as effective without corresponding federal guidance on implementation and enforcement.

Additionally, the attorneys general said the preventative care provision expanded healthcare access for women, specifically to contraceptives, and reduced socioeconomic, racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare.

“All patients in Illinois and across the country deserve continued access to what are often lifesaving, preventive health services,” Raoul said in a statement.

The initial lawsuit was brought in 2020 by Christian-owned companies who challenged the requirement that their employer-sponsored insurance plans cover preventive medicines for HIV.

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this summer that the provision was unconstitutional, but froze a lower court decision that would scrap the requirement. The appeals court said only the plaintiffs could exclude the services from their plans as the case continues to work through the legal system.

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Throughout her career, Tanzeem Choudhury, PhD, has worked at the intersection of wearable computing, AI, and health care. Over time, she came to see that tracking activity-related behaviors with wearable devices had the potential to support well-being before people became sick. Today she also thinks about how AI tools can be used to efficiently test and deliver new ideas for technology-assisted well-being in the real world. [JAMA}

This conversation is part of a series of interviews in which JAMA Network editors and expert guests explore issues surrounding the rapidly evolving intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and medicine.

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You may be interested in this Artificial Intelligence & Healthcare webinar on Oct. 29, 2024- more details here> 

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From March of 2020 to May of 2023, 1.38 million more people died in the United States than would have been expected — 1.38 million lives that, had circumstances been different, would not have been lost. [MedScape]

This is the legacy of the COVID pandemic. And I want to be clear that not all of these deaths are directly due to COVID; we’ll explore the deaths attributable to the virus in a minute. But the pandemic itself, the changes it wrought on society — the delayed cancer screenings, the missed outpatient appointments — all of these acted to change our fundamental understanding of the risk of living in this country.

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