Mayo Clinic, Microsoft partner for AI | FTC signs off on $3.9B acquisition | Medicaid, CHIP enrollment slide | more

When Mayo Clinic and Microsoft announced last week that they’re partnering to develop a frontier AI model for healthcare, observers could see where Mayo’s expertise in advanced digital medicine would interest Microsoft. The Big Tech behemoth has not been coy about its healthcare ambitions. 

The buyout, announced last summer, drew the attention of federal regulators at the Federal Trade Commission, concerned that competition for ambulatory surgery services would be stifled by the merger. To appease the agency, Ascension has agreed to divest from some centers previously owned by Amsurg.

The numbers from the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy’s Center for Children and Families, a nonprofit academic research group that is drawing from recent enrollment data gathered by state governments.

The American Hospital Association is out with a set of strategies for making healthcare more affordable—not only within hospitals but also across U.S. healthcare as a whole. The gameplan walks hospital leaders through a number of actionable and achievable aims to which they can contribute.

Among all medical specialties, emergency medicine is the single most likely to burn out its practitioners. 

Edward Scott Rock, 50, was sentenced to 41 months in prison and ordered to pay back the disabled and elderly customers who bought the customized vehicles only to realize they were never going to be delivered.  

In what’s being called a “data security incident,” Acadia Healthcare confirmed a compromised email account led to sensitive patient data being accessed by hackers. The full number of victims is being tabulated. 

Patients who have their claims turned down by private insurers often incur debt they need months to pay off, according to an analysis of 4,589 survey responses. More than half the field reported such debt topped $1,000 in their household. 

Western medicine often functions more like a high-tech patient-processing machine than a high-touch people-healing mission. This can and must change, argue three distinguished healthcare thought leaders. 

First revealed in March, the incident was confirmed to be months long. NYC Health + Hospitals blamed the intrusion on an unnamed third-party vendor. Stolen data includes medical records, finger and palm prints, and location data from patients and workers alike.

Moving X-ray images can help evaluate pulmonary regurgitation in Tetralogy of Fallot patients.

Radiologists and others in the imaging research industry are lining up to oppose proposed changes that would purportedly politicize federal funding.