It turns out that inconsistencies around patient death status in the EHR is a pretty common occurrence. A recent report in JAMA Internal Medicine investigated the prevalence of outdated EHR information using records from seriously ill patients at UCLA Health. From the 12,000 patients identified in this category, 676 were marked alive in their health records but were actually dead in state public records.

It gets worse.

As these patients were still assumed to be alive, 541 of them still had appointments scheduled after their death. These patients continued to be contacted by health care staff and received approximately 221 calls and 338 portal messages unrelated to their deceased status. Additional contact attempts urged these patients to get preventative care like flu shots and cancer screenings, and medications were still being authorized for at least 88 dead patients. 

This mistaken follow-up is not only wasteful for the health system, it could be upsetting for family members to receive these messages. Inconsistencies in EHR data could also be perpetuated in AI algorithms trained on this data, which would make these tools less accurate. 

Drivers of EHR inconsistencies

A part of the problem lies in the fragmented nature of EHRs. The average health system uses 18 different EHR vendors across affiliated providers. But these EHR systems aren’t always able to talk to one another, meaning patients may still struggle to access their data, doctors may order duplicate testing, or need to transfer health data with fax or a CD. With so many data sources trying to provide a total view of the patient, it is easy to see why a patient may be marked as deceased in an EHR used for inpatient services but their specialist or primary care doctor may have no idea. And the fact that many EHRs cannot link up easily with federal and state records makes recording patient deaths a much harder task.

Even without interoperability issues, verifying patient death is not easy. Health systems have to access state records to confirm patient death, and ease in state accessibility varies. Even if the patient is found in state records, if they have a common name, there may not be enough information for health systems to verify that it’s the right person. Research services have to be contracted out to do a deeper search, but if the patient can not be linked to a social security number, or the information in their EHR is insufficient, a deceased status can not be officially confirmed. Internal departments often do not have an organized system or incentive to verify a flag in a patient’s chart indicating their death. 

Dr. Eric Cheng, chief medical informatics officer at UCLA, explained challenges with coordinating this information, in an interview with StatNews: 

“If a patient were to call the clinic or a doctor and say a family member died, we don’t necessarily do the best job in documenting that the same way. Physicians don’t know whether that’s stored, the front desk clinic may not be comfortable if they’ve never heard of the patient — they would all document in the note, but not in the official place where it should be.”

Dr. Eric Cheng, chief medical informatics officer at UCLA, in StatNews

How can EHRs be improved?

Creating requirements and standards for interoperability has been a goal for CMS for many years—and now it appears real change is finally on its way. CMS launched the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) in December 2023, providing much-needed standards and allowing public-private collaboration to address gaps in health information exchange across EHR systems. Five organizations known as Qualified Health Information Networks (QHINs) are officially signed on to use this framework and can start exchanging data immediately. Hopefully, many others will follow. 

Patient misidentification not only contributes to poor tracking of death records but can also cause trauma and delayed care. To prevent this, another potential solution is creating unique patient identification numbers, a policy supported by some specialty groups, health systems, and industry organizations. 

A large part of making hospitals more accountable starts with having an efficient EHR system that keeps patient values as the focus. As solutions are being pushed, we hope to see advantages also impact entire health systems by preventing physician burnout, reducing administration costs, and providing high quality care.

The post When health records don’t capture patient deaths appeared first on Lown Institute.

The nation is facing a significant shortage of physicians, particularly in rural areas. In fact, the shortage is estimated by the American Medical Association to fall between 37,800 and 124,000 physicians within the next 12 years. From primary care to psychiatry, obstetrics, neurology, and oncology, numerous specialties are facing a physician shortage. And with more and more physicians retiring and quitting from burnout, the problem isn’t getting better.

Rural areas face the brunt of this shortage as urban areas have higher densities of both primary care physicians and specialists. Patients in rural areas tend to be older, poorer, and sicker, especially with chronic conditions. With fewer doctors around, they have to travel further for both preventative and emergency care, putting them at greater risk for poor health outcomes and mortality.   

The mismatch between medical school enrollment, residency slots, and the need for physicians in the workforce has resulted in a lose-lose situation where perfectly competent physicians face barriers to working while simultaneously, entire regions of the country are without sufficient access to physicians.

What can we do about this mismatch and resulting dilemma?

Increase residency opportunities through both federal and state funding

Most residency slots are funded by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), meaning that they need action by the federal government for expansion. This also means that no significant action had been taken for over 20 years (Congress had actually capped the number of residents), until the COVID-19 relief bill was passed. The COVID-19 relief bill opened the door for 1,000 new residency slots, 10% of which must be in rural areas. Another similar bill has been introduced in Congress that would allocate funding for an additional 2,000 residency slots every year for 7 years starting in 2025.

Another option is to increase residency slot funding on the state level. The majority of doctors stay in the states where they completed their residency. Both California and Texas–where the shortage is predicted to be the worst–approved multimillion dollar expansions in funding, resulting in increase retention of physicians in underserved, local areas. 

The Assistant Physician model

Missouri took a different approach, passing a law that launched a new category of licensure called assistant physicians (not to be confused with physician assistants). This allows medical school graduates who didn’t match to a residency on their first try to practice primary care in rural and underserved areas under the supervision of a licensed physician. While the program is relatively new, there is evidence it’s working at alleviating the rural physician shortage. As of early 2023, there were nearly 300 assistant physicians licensed in the state, about 3% the number of primary care doctors. Six other states now have similar laws allowing for unmatched medical school graduates to practice while they continue trying to match with a residency. Washington specifically designed their program for international medical graduates. 

The physician shortage in rural areas is a complex problem with numerous potential solutions. We need to increase the number of licensed medical professionals–including nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and international medical graduates–as well as retaining them. We need to reduce burnout so clinicians don’t hate their jobs and retire early. We need to incentivize trainees to serve in medical deserts where they’re needed the most. 

The realignment of community needs and the physician workforce pipeline will be tricky, but not impossible. While telehealth may help in the coming years, we should still be considering the most efficient way to build up our healthcare practitioner workforce.

The post How can we fix physician shortages in rural America? appeared first on Lown Institute.

Dr. Saini on the decision to measure stent overuse:

“The issue with stents illustrates some of the deep problems in American medicine, which has to do with how do you decide when something works and when it doesn’t? How do you decide if it works, how much to pay for it? When something is discovered not to work and you’re already paying for it, how do you turn that down? These are all difficult questions, and they’re not new.”

Dr. Saini on treating healthcare like a market:

“I don’t want to walk into my doctor’s office thinking I’m at a McDonald’s. I want to be listened to. I want to be known. I want my background, my family to be known. I want the clinician to hear me and to give me advice. And I want the dollars and cents in the background.”

Dr. Saini on the feasibility of transformative healthcare change:

“If people had an opportunity to work together, crowdsourcing the design of the health care system they want for themselves, their families, and others, I think it’s doable. It’s a big project. But when did we stop trying big projects? Moonshots are what we should try to do, and this is one of the biggest moonshots there is really: fixing American health care.”

Dr. Saini on what a uniquely American healthcare system could look like:

My own view is that we can do a lot better than Medicare or Medicare For All. We can do better in a way that would be different from Canada, different from Europe, different from any other country. If very American, it would be decentralized. It would have a lot of local and regional autonomy and control. It would have elements that were tuned to the local culture…America could have the best health care system in the world.

The post LISTEN: The “biggest moonshot” is fixing American healthcare appeared first on Lown Institute.

An overview of Health-Related Social Needs 

A large body of research shows that social factors like income, education, and neighborhood safety have a significant impact on our health, before we even step foot in a doctors’ office. Over the past two decades, clinicians and public health practitioners have increased their focus on upstream, preventative measures to address these social determinants of health. 

Health-related social needs (HRSN) can result from adverse social determinants. For example, having a low income may hinder someone from being able to delead the paint in their house, despite it causing them immediate health issues. Targeting this specific HRSN would be an effective way to improve the patient’s health and prevent further health concerns down the road. In a situation like this, deleading the patient’s home is health care. 

CMS supports HRSN screening

Many healthcare centers are already screening patients for HRSN, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will include HRSN screening as one of its key quality measures. In January, CMS outlined how states can be creative in using Medicaid-managed care plans to offer services targeting HRSN. Four states (Arizona, Arkansas, Massachusetts, and Oregon) have arranged for Medicaid coverage of rent/temporary housing for high-need individuals, and a recently approved California proposal allows for medically tailored meals, asthma remediation, and sobering centers as well. Creativity is encouraged if it means providing high-need individuals with the support that will keep them healthy.

On its face, this is beneficial. If clinicians can screen and identify HRSN, and if they can connect their patients with easy, effective assistance, the overall health of our population is likely to improve. However, HRSN screening can be detrimental if not approached with care.

HRSN screening: Proceed, but approach with caution

Healthcare guidance and support can only be effective if the patient trusts their care team. Unfortunately, American medicine has a spotty record of being trustworthy in certain communities. From the Tuskegee experiment to mistakenly reporting parents to social services to reporting abortion patients to the police, there are many reasons patients may trust their healthcare teams and may not want to self-report their HRSN. 

Take pediatric HRSN screening, for example. A recent JAMA Viewpoint by Arvin Garg, MD, MPH; Alison LeBlanc, MS, PMP; and Jean L. Raphael, MD, MPH lays out why this screening isn’t necessarily welcomed by all parents.

Despite parental support for HRSN screening and an opportunity for parents to connect and receive support from their pediatrician, there is also great concern particularly from low-income minoritized parents. Their concerns include feelings of shame, being judged and discriminated against by the health care team, fear that disclosing needs will lead to filings with child protective services and removal of their children, and frustration with disclosing sensitive needs without getting acknowledgment and help.

Arvin Garg, MD, MPH; Alison LeBlanc, MS, PMP; and Jean L. Raphael, MD, MPH in JAMA Viewpoint

This doesn’t mean that HRSN screening should be completely scrapped, but it should be developed and implemented with care and caution. 

The authors of the JAMA Viewpoint identify a few ways to ensure equitable and empathetic HRSN screening. Their recommendations include:

• Let the patient lead. If the patient chooses not to seek assistance for social needs, that decision must be respected.
• Incentivizing health systems to partner with patients in addressing their HRSN
• Shifting from screening for social risk (identifying adverse social factors in patients’ lives) towards social needs (asking about an individual’s priorities and perceptions of what they need) 
• Training hospital staff on unconscious bias and cultural humility so as to not cause further harm
• Collaborating with patients, staff, and community members to design social care support programs
• Advocating for a stronger social safety net. Ultimately, social policies will be needed to address HRSN. Health systems, staff, and patients alike should not hesitate to advocate voraciously for those policies.

Patience and persistence are also needed to overcome challenges in the long term. For example, the CMS evaluation report of their Accountable Health Communities Model found that while food insecurity was the most prevalent and persistent HRSN and beneficiaries with food needs were the most likely to use community services, this HRSN was unlikely to be fully resolved during the three year time period. This is indicative of the challenge of addressing unmet social needs in the long term; these problems did not appear overnight, nor will they be fixed overnight.

For HRSN screening to be effective, it requires trust between patient and provider. Kaiser Permanente found that something as simple as explaining why screening questions are being asked and how that information may be used has an impact on a patient’s willingness to divulge. Referral services should also be evaluated to ensure patients are provided with effective services in a timely manner; after all, screening is not particularly useful if nothing is done with the results. 

Regulatory bodies that set the standards for healthcare facilities can help by incentivizing health systems to adopt HRSN screening and solutions. The January 2023 guidance from CMS is a great starting point as it allows states to customize their services based on specific needs. 

When we approach it with humility and empathy, HRSN screening can be impactful. Addressing health-related social needs can be an effective way to quickly improve the health and life conditions of patients, and we should continue to push for progress in this area.

The post How to improve health-related social needs screening appeared first on Lown Institute.

My passion for and commitment to the field of public health was neither the culmination of a long-held childhood dream, nor was it something I headed into college having prepared to study for the next four years. Rather, it was the product of a singular, life-changing event: When I was 17, I lost a loved one to a synthetic opioid overdose.

In the months after her passing, I struggled to reconcile with the “What if’s?” surrounding her death. Was there something myself or others could have done to prevent it? In the journey to answer this question and cope with her loss, I began to reflect on the community in which we were raised: namely, one that was rural, relatively isolated, and lacked access to critical health and social services that may have saved her life if only she had them at her disposal. 

This led me to delve into research on programs and policies surrounding the opioid crisis during my time at the Yale School of Public Health, such as analyzing barriers to substance use disorder treatment in rural communities and exploring innovative state strategies to reduce opioid-related deaths in their communities. Along the way, I recognized there was a much larger (and equally-challenging) goal to be explored: What can we, as a society, do to interrupt the structures and systems that prevent us from leading our happiest, healthiest, and most-fulfilling lives?

In alignment with the Lown Institute, I believe we can answer this question by forging a healthcare system that places people over profit by promoting health equity, honoring clinician-patient relationships, and holding our health care institutions accountable. I look forward to putting this piece of the puzzle together by analyzing fair share spending in this country and exploring how hospital systems are (and aren’t) working to place community wellness at the heart of their operations.

When I’m not catching up on the latest health policy developments, you’ll find me reading my collection of self-improvement books, spending time outdoors with my dogs, or listening to my carefully-curated vinyl collection.

The post Meet Noelle Serino, new Lown Institute policy analyst  appeared first on Lown Institute.

The event kicked off with a discussion about incentives and accountability in healthcare. Earlier this year, panelist and healthcare expert Dr. Don Berwick published “Salve Lucrum: The Existential Threat of Greed in US Health Care” in JAMA, making waves in his unabashed critique of health sector greed. This unchecked greed, he argues, has an immense impact on entire communities.”We have worked very hard to…have a single effort to try and improve the upstream determinants of health, and to be honest with you, we’ve failed miserably at that,” Dr. Berwick told the audience. “We’ve been working at it for a very long time and we have some good examples [of effective changes], but it should be much bigger.” Panelists at this NY Fed Event agreed, emphasizing the dissonance between workers’ dedication and profit-driven policies.

“Our healthcare workforce does noble and often heroic work, but the system has given in to greed and the pursuit of excess profits. I think we can start to change this if we aggressively assert that hospitals have a responsibility to their communities that goes beyond the provision of healthcare.”

– Dr. Patty Gabow, Chair of the Lown Institute

Transparency is a key part of accountability. Dr. Patty Gabow, a panelist and Chair of the Lown Institute, pointed out that large nonprofit hospitals have tremendous taxpayer support. This support comes with the condition that these hospitals give back an equivalent value in community investment and support. Our “Fair Share” spending research at the Lown Institute suggests that this condition is not being met.

The 2023 Fair Share Spending Report revealed a $14.2 billion dollar national fair share deficit, meaning that the value of nonprofit hospital tax exemptions is far more than the value of investments communities receive in return. This gap in value, juxtaposed with the fact that many hospital workers earn below the federal poverty line while some hospital CEOs make millions each year, demonstrates just how off balance the current system is. We need social responsibility, but we have a profit-driven system.

As the panelists note, if hospitals did just two basic things; take care of their own and gave community investments equal in value to their tax breaks, they could pivot from excess profitability to become anchors for communities. “This should be the baseline,” said Tyler Norris, Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

“We treat vulnerability as some sort of exotic thing we don’t know how to solve for. But we’re not at a loss on how to build healthy, productive communities with children who thrive—many of us live in them. We don’t have an innovation problem, we have a distribution problem.”

Jason Purnell, President of the James S. McDonnell Foundation

For hospitals to become anchors for their communities, they need to collaborate with community members themselves. “We need radical inclusion of people’s voices,” said Dr. Leslie Walker-Harding, Senior Vice President and Chief Academic Officer at Seattle Children’s Hospital, “If you live in a particular community, you are an expert on that community, you know what you need and you know how it can be done.”

Watch the video recording to view the full event and panelist discussion.

The post WATCH: Investing in Health and Well-Being appeared first on Lown Institute.

On the 102nd birthday of Dr. Lown, hear from the 2023 Bernard Lown Award winner Dr. Altaf Saadi on her story of becoming a doctor; and how she’s inspired by the resiliency of the people she works with; and the importance of interconnectedness. Watch her acceptance of the Bernard Lown Award, read quotes from her speech, and see photos from the ceremony below.

Dr. Altaf Saadi accepts the Bernard Lown Award

The following are excerpts from Dr. Altaf Saadi’s remarks at the Bernard Lown Award ceremony June 7, 2023.

Following in the footsteps of Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, the inaugural recipient of this award, and Dr. Bernard Lown, its namesake, is no small challenge. Those are large shoes to fill. I am honored to be in their remarkable company and promise to do my best to earn this award every day.

I will begin in 2006, while I was a student at Yale University. I walked into a pre-med study group for my organic chemistry class. Another student looked up, wrinkled her forehead at seeing my shirt that said in bold, green letters: “Stop the Genocide in Darfur,” and she asked, “wait, what? There’s a genocide going on in Darfur?”

I would like to say this was the only encounter that I had like this as a budding doctor, but it wasn’t. Now, as a full-fledged doctor in medicine, I still receive reactions like this.

We live in a world that seems inundated by crisis after crisis. The conflict in Darfur, back in the early 2000s, involved the ethnic cleansing and death of over 300,000 Darfurians in Sudan.  Michael Brown was an 18-year-old boy who was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson.  The phrase “Hands up, don’t shoot,” that Michael Brown had uttered to Officer Wilson before he was killed quickly entered the lexicon of the growing Black Lives Matter movement.

“Yemen, Afghanistan, Ukraine. Uvalde, Pulse Nightclub, Sandy Hook Elementary School. Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, George Floyd. There are so many more.”

Dr. Altaf Saadi

But there is a crisis that does not garner headlines, and that is the crisis of collective indifference, particularly among those of us with the privilege to look away, to move on with our lives undisturbed and unbothered by the despair and agony of our brothers and sisters in humanity.

Today, that indifference is often directed toward immigrants in the United States, whether it’s those fleeing persecution in their home countries and arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border or those who have lived in our communities for decades without any ability to obtain documented immigration status.  

In my work, I often meet with and evaluate immigrants who are imprisoned by our government pending the outcome of their immigration cases. During one visit, an individual had soft tears in his eyes when he told me, “This is by far the longest I have ever talked to anyone in the past two years.” We had spent forty-five minutes talking about his time in solitary confinement and lack of medical care in the  detention facility.

Indifference is both individual and societal. For him, at the individual level, it meant not having a meaningful conversation with someone for years and prison guards making fun of his mental illness. At a societal level, it meant languishing in abusive, inhuman conditions in a for-profit immigration detention facility before being sent to a country where he has no family and faces significant risk of harm and death—part of a larger immigration detention system replete with physical brutality, sexual abuse, racist mistreatment, and denial of due process.

“When I tell people about the work that I do, a common reaction is, ‘Wow, that’s so depressing,’ or ‘Wow, that’s so hard…’ In fact, it is inspiring. It infuses me with purpose. How could I not be inspired by the resiliency of the individuals I serve?”

Dr. Altaf Saadi

What is hard is trying to convince people that the work matters. That people who may not look like them, or speak like them, or go on vacations with them, or go to school with their children, are worthy—of attention, money, of both individual and societal investment.

I was lucky enough to intern for Physicians for Social Responsibility, which, as many of you know, was founded by Dr. Lown to address the threat of nuclear war. As Dr. Lown explained at that time, “the real death threat in the world was not cardiac, but nuclear …. How could I be a doctor and close my eyes to this overwhelming reality?”

And it was during this internship that for the first time I saw and learned about examples of physicians, like Dr. Lown, who combined their passion for medicine with human rights advocacy.  It was those role models and others who gave me the inspiration and confidence to do the work that I do. Even now, I seek their stories out. Within the example of physician advocates and leaders, we can find a path that can crack the indifference wall, reminding ourselves not only of our own power—often, our collective power—but also our connection to others and ability to empathize with distant situations and sorrows and joys.

One of my favorite poets is Palestinian American Naomi Shihab Nye. In a poem titled “History,” she asks about: “What we did to one another/ on a planet so wide open for doing.”

I hope that, like Dr. Lown, I too will inspire other physicians to remember that, in this planet so wide open for doing, our doing must extend beyond our individual patients to ensure justice for people everywhere, that our doing must be used to nurture hope as the antidote to complacency, complicity and injustice, and that our doing must above all else take stock of the reality of our interconnectedness with one another. Thank you all again.

“Our doing must above all take stock of the reality of our interconnectedness with one another.”

Dr. Altaf Saadi

The post “How could I not be inspired by the resiliency of the individuals I serve?”: Dr. Altaf Saadi accepts the 2023 Bernard Lown Award appeared first on Lown Institute.

BOSTON, MA – Dr. Altaf Saadi has been named the winner of the 2023 Bernard Lown Award for Social Responsibility for her outstanding work as a health justice advocate for immigrants and others impacted by trauma. Dr. Saadi is a neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, and associate director of the MGH Asylum Clinic.

“Dr. Saadi is clearly unafraid to raise her voice and demand justice wherever it is needed, especially when the health of refugees is at stake,” said Vikas Saini, MD, president of the Lown Institute. “Her vision and bravery set an inspiring example for others to follow.” 

The Lown Institute, a healthcare think tank, grants this award annually in memory of their founder, the late Dr. Bernard Lown. Dr. Lown was one of the most distinguished physicians of the 20th century, best known for developing the defibrillator and receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. To be eligible for the award, nominees must be US clinicians age 45 or younger and stand out for their bold leadership in social justice, environmentalism, global peace, or other humanitarian efforts. The award, including a $25,000 prize, will be presented at an event on June 7.

“It is an honor to use my knowledge, passion, and purpose in medicine to speak out against injustice,” said Dr. Altaf Saadi. “Dr. Lown taught us to never whisper in the presence of wrong, and I hope to always live by that principle.”

Dr. Saadi’s many accomplishments in social responsibility include: 

• Helping hundreds of immigrants gain asylum and other forms of humanitarian relief through her volunteer work and leadership with the Physicians for Human Rights Asylum Network and MGH Asylum Clinic;
• Creating “Doctors For Immigrants,” a research-based website that provides resources for healthcare institutions to be sanctuaries for immigrants;
• Calling attention to abuse and poor conditions in immigration prisons as a medical expert for human rights organizations;  
• Speaking out on the myth of “excited delirium” and the dangers of neck restraints by law enforcement in medical and popular media.

Dr. Saadi was selected by a committee convened by the Lown Institute, including leaders from the American Medical Association, the National Medical Association, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and other groups focused on improving America’s health.

The Bernard Lown Award Ceremony will be held June 7th at Branch Line in Watertown, MA. Visit the Lown Institute website to learn more about Dr. Saadi. 

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About the Lown Institute

Founded in 1973 by Nobel Peace Prize winner Bernard Lown, MD, developer of the defibrillator and cardioverter, the Lown Institute believes that a radically better system of health is possible and generates bold ideas towards that goal. The Lown Hospitals Index for Social Responsibility is a signature project of the Institute and features measures never used before like racial inclusivity, avoidance of overuse, and pay equity.

Contact

Aaron Toleos
(978) 821-4620
atoleos@lowninstitute.org

The post PRESS RELEASE: Boston neurologist earns national award for health justice leadership appeared first on Lown Institute.

Empathy is key to healing…but is devalued in our healthcare system

No matter the technological advancements made, AI will never be able to fully imitate human connection. There is something unique about the trusting relationship between patient and provider, about person-to-person contact, that is innate to healing. A popular refrain states that the first evidence of civilization was a fractured femur that had healed, demonstrating that at some point, at least one human had taken care of another one until they had healed. Society is built around empathy and compassion for our fellow human beings.

“The art of medicine is a process for nurturing a special human relationship that champions a partnership for healing.”

– Dr. Bernard Lown

Most healthcare workers enter the field to care for those in need. But the system we have now makes it difficult to practice medicine in a way that fosters connection. As Jennifer Lycette, a rural community hematologist/oncologist from Oregon, notes in her STAT opinion piece, the pressure placed on physicians to get through as many patients as possible, as fast as possible, is not conducive to compassionate care. The pressure to be as “efficient” as possible has resulted in less time with patients and more time documenting. The burnout in some hospitals has gotten bad enough to push medical residents to unionize.

Time pressure pushes physicians to go-go-go. The lack of quality time with patients has documented negative impacts on physician well-being, empathy, and patient outcomes; could it be that AI performed better than doctors because of a systemic flaw and not an individual one? 

AI could support, not replace, human healthcare

It’s worth noting that the JAMA IM study is not completely comparable to real-life circumstances. Researchers could not ethically feed real electronic medical records into AI without violating HIPAA, so patient questions were chosen from a Reddit forum. This does not diminish the validity of the questions but could influence how human physicians answered them. Online culture, particularly Reddit, does not prioritize empathy and the humans responding may have followed online communication norms rather than professional communication norms. Human respondents were also not familiar with the entire medical history of the patients and may have had better results if they were seeing them in real life. 

This study suggests that AI at least has the potential to support quality, empathetic care. Already, AI is being used to streamline administrative tasks, answer patient questions, and for machine learning; its likely that in the near future there will be more AI scribes and virtual nursing assistants. As the technology continues developing, AI will be used to supplement care but it can’t replace doctors. The art of healing is a human one.

The post Could AI really replace human doctors? appeared first on Lown Institute.