Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

Abstracts in Urgent Care – November 2026

Editor’s Note: This month’s Abstracts department focuses exclusively on research that examines artificial intelligence in healthcare. AI-Assisted Professional Development Take Home Point: When paired with skilled facilitation, professional development programs supported by artificial intelligence (AI) can enhance engagement, foster reflective practice, and promote immediate application of interactive strategies in diverse teaching settings. Citation: Hou S-I. Enhancing interactive teaching for the next generation of nurses: generative-AI-assisted design of a full-day professional development workshop. Informatics. 2026;13(1):11. doi:10.3390/informatics13010011 …

Stressed Out Consumers Count on AI For Advice

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% …

States Allege OpenAI Fails To Adequately Protect Consumers

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 …

Utah Expands AI Prescription Pilots Despite Concerns

Utah is expanding its testing of AI as a tool for prescribing medications with the possibility that some test programs could eventually allow prescriptions to be ordered by AI autonomously without direct clinician involvement. Last week, the state’s Office of Artificial Intelligence Policy approved several new pilots, including a program that could allow prescriptions for dermatology drugs to be written based on a dermatology app that assesses acne through patient-provided photos. Initially, physicians will review …

Medical Leaders: AI Decisions Are Not Superior To Clinician Experience

Recently, the American Academy of Family Physicians, American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American College of Physicians, American College of Surgeons, and American Medical Association issued a joint statement expressing concern about perceptions that AI is “inherently better informed than physicians or that physicians cannot be trusted to make clinical decisions without first consulting this technology.” The groups say their organizations are not rejecting AI in medicine per se. Instead, they …

Clinicians Rewrite Vast Majority of AI-Drafted Portal Messages

Researchers from Dartmouth found that when using large language models (LLMs) to draft responses to patient portal messages, clinicians may spend more time editing the AI responses than it would take to write them manually in the first place. Using more than 610,000 patient portal messages, the researchers created a training dataset of 144,000 clinician–patient conversations and tested multiple commercial and locally hosted LLMs against expert-written responses. In the study —which was presented at the …

States Adopt Varied AI Scribe Laws

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 …

AI Model Expands ECG’s Diagnostic Potential

An AI model developed by researchers at New York-Presbyterian and Columbia University Irving Medical Center has received approval from the Food and Drug Administration for use in detecting structural heart disease through electrocardiograms (ECGs), according to a news release. Known as EchoNext, the deep learning model was trained to detect a broad range of structural abnormalities, as published in Nature: The model analyzes a routine 12-lead ECG and estimates whether a patient is likely to …

AMA Doubles Down on Limits For Artificial Intelligence

The American Medical Association (AMA) developed a new set of policies at its recent annual meeting of the AMA House of Delegates to help ensure that AI is used to augment, not replace, physician decision-making, as outlined in a press release. While the policies aim to address a broad range of healthcare AI applications, they reinforce basic principles for payers and providers that use AI-powered tools. Not surprisingly, the association opposes the use of autonomous …

The Risks of Fully AI-Driven Revenue Cycle Management

Kimberly Hardin, Josh Rainey As healthcare organizations look to modernize operations, the idea of a fully artificial intelligence (AI)-driven revenue cycle management (RCM) system is increasingly appealing in urgent care. Automating everything from coding and charge capture to claims submission and denial management promises efficiency, speed, and reduced labor costs. However, moving to a truly autonomous AI model introduces a range of risks that organizations must carefully evaluate before making the leap. Financial Exposure and …

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