Mass General Brigham's Care Connect employs 12 physicians who log in remotely from around the U.S. to help patients 24/7. Care Connect is one of many AI-based tools that hospitals, doctors and staff are testing for a range of medical tasks, from note-taking and reviewing diagnostic results, to billing and ordering supplies. Proponents of AI say these programs can help relieve burnout and worker shortages by reducing time spent on administrative tasks. Some research shows they may improve diagnoses. But critics worry that AI agents can miss important details such as overlapping medical conditions, whether patients can afford or get to follow-up care, and family dynamics that personal physicians understand because they treat patients long-term.
President Trump said Friday he plans to hold a meeting with major insurance companies in the coming days in a bid to pressure them to lower prices for consumers who are set to see premium costs soar when ObamaCare’s enhanced subsidies expire at the end of the year. 'I'm going to call in the insurance companies that are making so much money, and they have to make less, a lot less,' Trump said during an Oval Office announcement on drug pricing. 'I'm going to see if they get their price down, to put it very bluntly. And I think that is a very big statement.'
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Sunday he remains confident that Congress will extend expiring ACA tax credits despite persistent opposition from Republicans. In a Sunday morning interview with ABC’s Jonathan Karl on 'This Week,' Jeffries dismissed Senate Majority Leader John Thune's remarks that a clean three-year extension of the credits would be dead on arrival in the Senate, saying Thune 'is not serious about protecting the healthcare of the American people.'
CMS is distributing a much-needed batch of 400 new Medicare-supported graduate medical education positions to residency programs across the U.S. These residency slots were created under the Consolidated Appropriations Act (CAA) of 2021 and the CAA of 2023 and are intended to help grow the physician workforce and address the nation's doctor shortage, particularly in primary care. More than 60% of the newly awarded positions will go to primary care and psychiatry residency programs.
CMS announced the creation of the Office of Rural Health Transformation. The office will oversee management of the Rural Health Transformation Program and includes a Division of State Rural Engagement that will provide policy and operational guidance to states and other stakeholders. The office will monitor states' implementation of the program's initiatives to ensure compliance.
A new hospital is scheduled to open next month in Ringgold, replacing the existing CommonSpirit Memorial Hospital North Georgia, owned by Catoosa County, the old Hutcheson Medical Center in Fort Oglethorpe. The county plans to convert the old center into a mixed-use facility of housing and retail space. The new hospital will be owned and operated by CommonSpirit, which has been leasing the old Hutcheson facility from the county for the past eight years while working on developing the new hospital.