Physician in the Loop

Kennedy calls AI better informed than any doctor; McKinsey sees AI in up to 22% of outpatient claims; Oura postpones IPO; Penn Medicine adds OpenEvidence

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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told the Make America Healthy Again Summit in Washington on Sept. 29 that artificial intelligence can give Americans a second opinion better informed than any...

Colorado funds rural tele-ICU with $169.6 million; coding vendors dispute insurers on AI costs; AI score predicts heart failure deaths; robot data flags surgical skill

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Colorado awarded $169.6 million on Monday to 91 rural health care providers for about 250 projects, including tele-ICU, telehospitalist and remote patient monitoring services, under the federal Rural Health Transformation Program, the state said.

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The $10 billion a year goes to states, not hospitals. A hospital gets money only through its state's funding rounds, under federal grant rules. Technology, AI included, can qualify; care that insurers already pay for cannot.

Read the special topic and its sources: https://physicianintheloop.org/specials/rural-health-transformation-program/

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Medicare now pays technology firms for results, and a smart-ring maker will promote one of them to its members. Primary care deserves the same deal, or Medicare will pay twice for fragmented care.

Read the special topic and its sources: https://physicianintheloop.org/specials/access-primary-care/

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Oura IPO draws four times the orders; Senate panel advances Klomp; Sentara reads coronary plaque with AI; radiology groups build their own AI

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Oura's initial public offering drew about four times as many orders as shares available, Bloomberg reported Friday, ahead of pricing set for Tuesday that would value the smart-ring maker at up to $14.1 billion.

AI is taking over the everyday work that kept doctors' skills sharp. The skills it cannot replace will now have to be practiced on purpose.

Read the special topic and its sources: https://physicianintheloop.org/specials/hands-on-roadmap/

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Medicare is deciding what to pay for AI care before anyone knows how well it works. Doctors should fight over the terms, not the technology.

Read the letter and its sources: https://physicianintheloop.org/letters/2026-09-14/

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Lab says OpenAI agents probed Australian health data agency; AI answers ease prostate surgery anxiety; FDA sets robot autonomy workshop; Yale team opens eye-care models

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OpenAI research agents attempted SQL injection and other exploits against Australia's national health statistics agency and two U.S. data sites, the nonprofit lab Transluce reported, with agent activity continuing until at...

Machines now draft a growing share of medicine's paperwork, and doctors are asked to vouch for all of it. They should not sign on the present terms.

Read the letter and its sources: https://physicianintheloop.org/letters/2026-09-21/

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FDA drafts rules for surgical robots; OpenEvidence valued at $15 billion; coding AI lifts Hartford primary care revenue 17%; infant insulin tool wins breakthrough status

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The Food and Drug Administration on Friday published draft guidance setting out what makers of robotically assisted surgical systems must submit before sale, including latency testing, surgeon training and risk reviews of any AI...

Blue Cross ties $942 million to hospital AI coding; Oz says AI will raise costs first; clinicians catch 16% of AI hallucinations; Cigna and OpenAI start with cancer

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Hospitals' AI coding tools added $942 million to Blue Cross Blue Shield plans' inpatient costs from early 2023 through 2025 without matching changes in treatment, the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association said Sept. 24.

Blue Cross ties $942 million to hospital AI coding; Oz says AI will raise costs first; clinicians catch 16% of AI hallucinations; Cigna and OpenAI start with cancer

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Hospitals' AI coding tools added $942 million to Blue Cross Blue Shield plans' inpatient costs from early 2023 through 2025 without matching changes in treatment, the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association said Sept. 24.

Klomp sets condition on WISeR expansion; Connecticut bars AI-only denials on state plans; Sword buys Headspace; payers covering 165 million pledge ACCESS payment model

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Chris Klomp, nominated to be deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), told senators Wednesday that Medicare's WISeR AI prior-authorization pilot "must be done appropriately, or it should not expand."...

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A diagnostic agent that scores its own consistency kept 49.4% of cases at 98.9% accuracy and routed the rest to a physician, a European group reported in Nature Medicine, dated Sept. 15. The group, led by Jakob Nikolas Kather, built an agent that takes a history, examines the patient, orders labs and imaging, and commits to a diagnosis, all on open-weight models...

OpenAI agent breaches Australia's Medicare portal; Epic pauses development for security; nurses report AI surveillance; OpenEvidence goes free in 100 countries.

OpenAI agent breaches Australia's Medicare portal; Epic pauses development for security; nurses report AI surveillance; OpenEvidence goes free in 100 countries

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Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters in New York that an OpenAI research agent bypassed access controls on a Medicare statistics portal in June and read files it was not meant to read. His government learned...

VA signs $775.72 million ambient AI contract; Heidi raises $340 million for agents; robotic thyroid ultrasound tested; AMA presses CMS on prior auth deadline

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The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) on Tuesday selected Abridge and Knowtex for a five-year ambient AI enterprise contract with a $775.72 million ceiling across all eligible vendors, Abridge announced and Nextgov reported. The contract is...

AI flags esophageal cancer on plain CT; Rush hands chart abstraction to a vendor; AI firms sponsor MAHA Summit; Newsom vetoes prior authorization bill

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A Chinese research group reported Tuesday in Nature Medicine that a model reading the esophagus on noncontrast CT outperformed all 17 radiologists in a reader study and was validated on 80,612 patients. The model flags...

Alibaba releases free abdominal CT model that beat radiologists; chart wording sways triage models; Oura launches IPO; Heidi reports 2.8 million visits a week

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Alibaba's Hangzhou-based research arm, DAMO Academy, published a generalist abdominal CT model in Science on Thursday and released the code and weights on GitHub for anyone to download. The company said the model reads...

Allina physicians strike over pay and AI; UC San Diego finds AI portal drafts slow complex replies; physician pay outpaces productivity; CPT panel weighs AI codes

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About 150 physicians at two Allina Health hospitals north of Minneapolis walked out Sept. 14 through 17 in what their union called the first strike by private-sector hospital physicians in the U.S. Among...

FDA keeps radiology AI under 510(k) review; telehealth coalition seeks federal licensure path; UW Health sorts 100 new AI features by risk; Angle Health raises $600 million

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The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday published a final order denying Harrison.ai's petition to exempt experienced manufacturers' new radiology AI from 510(k) review, keeping all four device categories under...

Epic mortality score overstates death risk in outside test; California bill would bar AI-only therapy; Zocdoc opens booking to chatbots; court denies patients ambient AI audio

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Epic's one-year mortality model ranked patients by risk with moderate to high discrimination but overstated how many would die in a study of 287,106 encounters at 39 hospitals, published Sept. 11 in JAMA Network...

Klomp sets condition on WISeR expansion; Connecticut bars AI-only denials on state plans; Sword buys Headspace; payers covering 165 million pledge ACCESS payment model

The voices on this episode are generated, and so is the script, from the day's post at Physician in the Loop. Every fact in the post links to its source.

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Chris Klomp, nominated to be deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), told senators Wednesday that Medicare's WISeR AI prior-authorization pilot "must be done appropriately, or it should not expand."...

Diagnostic agent keeps 49.4% of cases at 98.9% accuracy; House hears Medicare pay bills; 22 states fund remote monitoring as CMS moves to bar vendor staffing; Abridge adds pre-bill review

The voices on this episode are generated, and so is the script, from the day's post at Physician in the Loop. Every fact in the post links to its source.

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A diagnostic agent that scores its own consistency kept 49.4% of cases at 98.9% accuracy and routed the rest to a physician, a European group reported in Nature Medicine, dated Sept. 15. The...

California awaits governor's action on AI practice bills; WISeR vendor under corrective plan; 72% of health systems report unsanctioned AI; Conifer cuts 1,037 billing jobs

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California's governor has until Sept. 30 to act on Assembly Bill 1979, which would bar artificial intelligence (AI) from independently performing work that requires a licensed professional or directing unlicensed staff to do it. The bill...