UHC accused of $100M Medicaid fraud scheme | Healthcare AI roundup | Black physician directory sued | AMGA interview

It’s alleged in a lawsuit that the insurer manipulated patient diagnoses to receive higher risk-adjusted payments from MassHealth, the Medicaid program in Massachusetts. Patients with “depression” and “anxiety” were said to be labeled alongside those with more serious behavioral health issues to boost payments, in violation of the law. The insurer denies the allegations.

More people are turning to LLMs for helpful answers to subjective questions. Might they be better off sticking with web search engines?

Asking medical questions of AI with language spoken “in the wild”—meaning with LLM prompts from everyday consumers—brings back answers with decidedly mediocre accuracy, a new study shows. 

The lawsuit against Find a Black Doctor was filed by Travis Morrell, MD—a dermatologist based in Colorado—who alleges he was harmed by being excluded from the directory on the basis of race. His case has the backing of the conservative-aligned advocacy group Do No Harm.

AMGA says it has the policy solutions ready and is urging Congress to act now before more practices are forced to make irreversible decisions.

A team of healthcare scholars is making U.S. states an offer they hope the border-defined polities won’t refuse: If you’ll pay for the reinvention of primary care, we’ll help sell the public on the rightness of measured, state-level efforts to preserve the profession.

In an email, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked workers to consider supporting screenings of at-risk individuals arriving stateside. The move follows a formal recognition of the ongoing Ebola outbreak in Africa as a Level 2 emergency, meaning the U.S. will have to take certain precautions to keep the virus from entering the country.

Teladoc, the popular telehealth platform, will provide urgent care, dermatology and nutrition support through Walmart’s existing virtual patient care platform. The companies made the announcement Thursday.

As a class-action lawsuit gets rolling in California over the use of ambient AI in healthcare, a national law firm is drawing takeaways for hospitals and other provider organizations. Makes sense: All AI-equipped providers are potential targets for similar litigation now. 

Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center is named in a court filing against a physician at the facility who allegedly failed to clean a wound, leaving 12 pieces of twigs, moss and pine needles inside. The alleged victim, an 18-year-old man, later died.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said it’s issuing a nationwide moratorium on new providers entering the spaces until it has a chance to look into allegations of fraud, waste and abuse. It confirmed investigations of various organizations are pending.

A meticulous comparison of quality-of-life factors across 100 countries has yielded good news and bad news for the United States of America.

The devices were set aside to be scrapped before they were stolen. Now, patients could be using them and not even know it.

University leaders, clinicians and industry partners recently gathered to celebrate the opening of the Imaging Research & Development Center on UC’s medical campus.