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How to make emergency rooms safer for people with dementia

March 25, 2026
March 25, 2026
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Morning Rounds Writer and Reporter

Good morning. Today's the deadline for the White House to nominate a CDC director, or else it won't be able to keep NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya in his acting role at the other agency. STAT's Executive Editor Rick Berke and Washington reporter Daniel Payne got the inside scoop last week on how the search has been going. We're on the lookout for news. 

first opinion

Oz announces new CMS program in STAT

A close up image of a clinician's gloved hands holding a child's hand. The child is in a hospital bed.

Adobe

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is launching a new pilot program to help integrate and coordinate health care for children with complex conditions. The pilot will offer $125 million to a maximum of five states to test an approach that connects physical and behavioral health care and community support.

The announcement comes about a year after CMS announced that it was considering options to reduce in size or make other changes to the program's precursor, the Integrated Care for Kids Model.

"This administration has been especially aggressive about pushing out experimental models to see if it can incentivize high-quality care at lower costs," said STAT's Mario Aguilar, who, along with his health tech colleagues, has covered other new initiatives. But with all new models, he says that "the devil is in the details about eligibility, payments, evaluations and more." Read the announcement in STAT's First Opinion section for what we know so far.

POLICY

Robert Malone out from ACIP

Robert Malone, an outspoken medical doctor and ally of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is stepping away from the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices after a federal judge blocked the panel's work. Since Kennedy appointed Malone to the group last year, it has played a major role in the Trump administration's reshaping of vaccine policies, including voting to delay the hepatitis B birth dose given to infants.

Since the judge's decision, Malone has made confusing statements about the status of the panel. He told STAT's Chelsea Cirruzzo that he didn't want to talk when she reached him by phone last night, but in a text to Roll Call, he said: "Suffice to say I do not like drama, and have better things to do." Read more from Chelsea on said drama.

one big number

1 in 3

That's the proportion of U.S. adults who say they've turned to AI chatbots in the past year for health information, according to a new KFF poll. Administered mostly online with rare phone calls between late February and early March, the survey included responses from a little over 1,000 people. Here are a few other interesting findings:

  • Most people turned to AI because they wanted immediate advice. But 1 in 5 said health care affordability and access concerns played a part.
  • Among those who used AI, 41% said they uploaded personal medical information such as test results or doctors' notes for personalized advice. Proportionally, that translates to 13% of the public. (And to be clear, a majority of these people are worried about privacy, but uploaded the information anyway.)
  • A lot of people are not following up with doctors after they get their AI advice, including 58% who asked about mental health and 42% who asked about physical health.

health tech

Would you know an AI X-ray if you saw one?

A (spoiler alert) AI generated X-ray of, I think, a hip bone. Very convincing.

Mickael Tordjman 

More AI news! Before we get into it: there's no evidence that deepfake X-rays are causing any disruption in health systems. Still, "Anyone could be confronted at some point with a fake X-ray and should be able to differentiate real and fake," researcher Mickael Tordjman told STAT's Katie Palmer.

In a new study including 17 radiologists, Tordjman found that fewer than half noticed that something was off when asked to diagnose patients based on fake imaging. Even when they were warned to look out for deepfakes, the doctors only differentiated them accurately 75% of the time.

Read Katie's conversation with Tordjman about how deepfakes could introduce risk in medicine, who's responsible for minimizing it, and how well Katie identified deepfakes compared to the doctors in the study.

notable quotable

'Do not bring a patient with dementia to the emergency room unless she is turning blue.'

That's what a neurologist told Gabriela Khazanov after she had taken her mother, who has dementia, to the ER. Studies have found that patients with dementia are at greater risk for problematic, preventable emergency care outcomes, including long hospital stays, readmission to the emergency department, and increased mortality. Khazanov's own experience (and that of Jay Baruch, who wrote a similar essay last week) reflects that risk. Read her First Opinion essay about how relatively minor changes could substantially improve the emergency room experience for patients with dementia. 

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What we're reading

  • 'They tricked me': A father was chained after he went to ICE to reunite with his kids, KFF Health News

  • The U.S. needs to be worried about Iranian biological materials, STAT
  •  'It felt like a life-or-death choice': Pregnancy with long Covid has many unknowns, The Sick Times
  • FTC strikes proposed deal with CVS over charges its PBM manipulated insulin prices, impeded access, STAT

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