Practice Management
A growing number of Americans are turning to AI for mental health guidance and emotional support as stress becomes an increasingly common part of daily life, according to the American Psychological Association’s 2026 Stress in America report. The findings are based on a survey of 3,132 U.S. adults conducted in July and August 2026. Among respondents, 60% reported that stress negatively affected their sleep, 56% cited effects on their mental or emotional well-being, and 51% …
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Attorneys general in Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, and West Virginia have all filed separate lawsuits against OpenAI as part of a coordinated effort to question whether OpenAI has misled consumers into believing ChatGPT is safer and more medically reliable than it actually is. For example, Iowa is seeking financial penalties of up to $40,000 per Consumer Fraud Act violation, compensation for affected consumers, and court-ordered changes to OpenAI’s safety practices. It also …
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A new Lancet Digital Health viewpoint article argues that virtual urgent care should not be limited to a single service model because different approaches influence access, equity, cost, and operations. The authors describe 4 common health system models—telemedicine conversion, on-demand visits, scheduled virtual visits, and asynchronous store-and-forward care—and emphasize that each type addresses different patient needs. The authors note that 94% of urgent care centers offered telehealth by 2022, up from 29% in 2019—largely driven …
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A large-scale analysis of electronic health record data from more than 2,000 hospitals and 47,000 clinics found that secure patient portal messaging has become a component of outpatient care rather than a replacement for office visits, as published in JAMA. Investigators analyzed communication trends among active patients from 2020–2025 using nearly 8 billion office visits, portal messages, telephone encounters, and telehealth visits. Portal messages coming in from patients rose from 0.99 to 2.50 messages per …
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Rhode Island recently became the first state with a law specifically aimed at ambient AI scribes, requiring disclosure to patients when scribes are used and provision of an opt-out process. State law also says the provider must review any AI-generated documentation for accuracy. Only a small number of states have enacted laws that specifically require healthcare providers to disclose the use of ambient AI tools during patient encounters. A few others rely on broader AI …
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A new survey from the American Medical Association’s (AMA) Center for Digital Health and AI found that physician use of AI has increased substantially, with 81% reporting use in practice now compared with 38% in 2023. The average number of use cases per physician also rose from 1.1 to 2.3. Physicians say they most commonly use AI for research summarization and clinical documentation. Confidence in AI is increasing too, with more than 75% of surveyed …
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Not to be outdone by the other household names in consumer technology, Microsoft has now launched Copilot Health, its AI health chatbot within Copilot that knits together health records, health history, and device data from more than 50 wearables, according to a press release. Microsoft says the Copilot platform already responds to some 50 million consumer health questions each day. Through the company’s recently integrated partner platform for sharing health records, HealthEx, the AI tool …
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Amazon Web Services has introduced Amazon Connect Health, a collection of artificial intelligence tools, including features that help clinicians sort out clinical information from patient histories. Amazon reasons that clinicians and staff spend too much time cobbling together information, and the new agentic AI tools can take on that task instead. Already in service at UC San Diego, the AI suite is verifying patients’ identities; handling appointment scheduling in real time; creating summaries of medical …
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A study of general internal medicine physicians from 2 ambulatory practice networks evaluated whether reserving protected time for EHR tasks—such as messaging, prior authorizations, or medication refills—affects physician productivity and hands-on EHR time. Researchers compared 130 general internal medicine physicians (41 in the intervention group and 89 in the control group) from November 2021 to June 2024 and set aside 1 appointment slot per half-day (20-30 minutes) dedicated to asynchronous EHR tasks. As published in …
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A national survey of 2,174 U.S. acute care hospitals found growing uptake of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools integrated with electronic health records (EHRs) in 2024, as published in JAMA Network Open. A total of 762 hospitals (31.5%) were considered “early adopters,” meaning they currently use integrated, generative AI. Another 24.7% say they plan to have implementation within a year (“fast followers”), suggesting that more than half of the hospitals surveyed would have adoption by …
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