artificial intelligence
The haves and the have nots of medical AI
NORTH COUNTRY HEALTHCARE
In the small, desert town of Kingman, Ariz., there is little time for the local health clinic to support bureaucratic battles with insurers or keep up with administrative tasks. There's also little money for artificial intelligence tools to handle some of those tasks, like richer academic hospitals with better data systems can. But that could change if the Kingman clinic becomes part of the Practice Network, a group that aims to help smaller providers implement AI tools in settings where adoption is often stymied by technical and financial challenges.
Participants accepted to the program will spend a year working with experts to test AI tools and incorporate them into their software systems and work routines. And with eight rural hospital closures across the U.S. in 2023 and another 700 at risk due to financial distress, the stakes are high. Read more from STAT's Casey Ross on what it takes to bring AI into rural clinics.
first opinion
When did medical school become a research arms race?
Publishing clinical research has become one of the most important parts of a medical student's professional portfolio, and the way many residency programs rate their applicants. This was a jarring realization for second-year medical student Anmol Shrestha, who believed school was a place to learn about the human body and train in patient-facing skills like bedside manner.
"The focus on research does not align with the skills that are most important for making good physicians," Shrestha writes in a new First Opinion essay. "The measure of what makes a good medical student and future physician should not be how many publications they have, but how well they understand and care for their patients." Read more from Shrestha on the ramifications of toxic publication culture in training.
housing as health care
Housing insecurity prominent in one emergency department
Last spring, more than 23,000 patients came through the emergency room and were screened for housing needs at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn. One in every 20 were homeless or experiencing housing insecurity — critical information for providers to support follow-up care. A study published Friday in JAMA Network Open details the ER's findings: Suicide was a top concern for patients dealing with housing insecurity or homelessness, who were also more likely to be uninsured and have multiple visits to the emergency room.
Readers should take a grain of salt when trying to extrapolate from studies focused on a single hospital or clinic, like this one. The authors noted that since the VUMC emergency department is frequently full, diverting ambulances to other institutions, the data may underestimate the prevalence of housing insecurity for those using emergency medical services in the area. To learn more, the authors wrote, more hospitals can implement similar screenings.
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