Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

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 …

Physician Use of AI Increases As Confidence Grows

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 …

New Amazon AI Tools Sum Up Information, Handle Scheduling

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 …

How Should Regulators Structure New AI Rules?

The American Hospital Association (AHA) and healthcare solution providers are chiming in on how they want federal regulators to structure their oversight of artificial intelligence and its integration into clinical care. For example, AHA suggested that regulations should rely on existing rules to smooth the path to innovation while also preempting state laws. It also wants to see AI companies required to meet compliance standards for privacy and security as HIPAA-covered entities. Additionally, AHA emphasizes …

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