Weekly Update: Docs in moral distress | Faith groups sue UnitedHealth | CMS ditches fax | DOJ sues medical schools | more

Almost two in five physicians suffered moral distress in the two weeks leading up to their being asked about it by researchers. That was a markedly larger slice than the team observed in the general U.S. working population. 

Led by a Quebec-based faith organization, a coalition of investors is asking a court to force UnitedHealth to provide details on the social impacts of its history of mergers and acquisitions. The lawsuit comes after the plaintiffs, all company shareholders, failed to get the proposal passed through internal channels. The Securities and Exchange Commission has also opted not to intervene. 

In a Final Rule revealed last week, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services outlined its plan to exchange medical records, diagnostic images and clinical notes electronically using secure protocols. Once the rule is published in the Federal Register, any HIPAA-covered entity that interacts with Medicare will have two years to follow CMS into the modern age.

Meanwhile members of Gen Z are twice as likely as other generations to get sneaky about their use of medical AI. 

Ohio State University College of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine and UC San Diego School of Medicine all received letters this week where federal authorities are requesting details related to admissions, including standardized test scores, donor correspondence and more. The schools say they are already compliant with state and federal regulations. 

ImmunityBio, the developer of bladder cancer treatment Anktiva, is accused by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration of disseminating “false or misleading information” about the drug's efficacy in an advertisement and podcast. The FDA said it’s not the first time it's sent a warning letter to the company’s executives over allegedly inaccurate claims.

U.S. healthcare will know it’s gotten AI right when the technology demonstrably improves care access, attentiveness and outcomes for the least financially healthy among us. 

The sandbox setup lets companies test new systems under relaxed rules but with close parental—make that governmental—supervision. 

A federal grand jury indicted Anar Rustamov, 38, of Azerbaijan on 14 counts of healthcare fraud. The complex conspiracy allegedly involved billing Medicare Advantage for medical equipment that providers never ordered. Rustamov is currently a fugitive from justice. 

Successfully adopting the technology across wide and varying care settings depends on a whole lot more than just technical sophistication.