News You Can Use: COVID19 Ripping through China, Medicare Spending Bill and AI Chatbots
By Dr. Nick van Terheyden aka Dr. Nick
Twitter: @drnic1
Host of Dr. Nick: The Incrementalist – #TheIncrementalist
This month is our final episode of “News You Can Use” on Healthcare NOW Radio that features news from the month of December 2022 and a close-out to the year.
As I did last month I am talking to Craig Joseph, MD (@CraigJoseph) Chief Medical Officer at Nordic Consulting Partners.
Episode NOW on Demand
We discuss the latest news out of China which is grappling with an explosion of COVID-19 cases as it struggles to find a path after holding out for a zero COVID policy. We review a little history here with the two studies that were published showing how difficult it is to prevent transmission (The importance of airflow and South Korea’s transmission study and long-distance transmission in the Australian Quarantine hotel).
Last year we both had concerns that we would see a loss of Telemedicine capability as the pandemic era restrictions were reversed (Telemedicine – back to the Future) and lose our Remote-based patient monitoring capabilities. But the recent Medicare Spending bill included some positive takeaways with an extension of the pandemic-induced Telehealth flexibilities including hospital care at home through 2024 – an additional 2 years. Perhaps enough time to cement in some of these changes permanently? There was also increased spending for the VA system and increases for the NIH and the CDC.
We touch on our discussion including security issues from last year including my SIM Jacking experience and Privacy-invading pixels and (inadvertent) sharing of patient data via Facebook add-ins.
Craig reviews his AMIA CIC conference AI discussion and comment from Micky Tripathi and his rabbits in the context of the rising interest and apparent capabilities of ChatGPT – probably not a smooth progression but rather a stepwise increase is what we are seeing.
And we can’t close out the year without highlighting again the negative impact of Criminalizing Medical Errors and Nurse RaDonda Vaught case and don’t miss Craig’s big reveal at the end of the episode.
You can read more about the series here and the concept of keeping up with innovating in healthcare. Please send me your suggestions on topics you’d like to see covered. You can reach out direct via the contact form on my website, send me a message on LinkedIn or on my Facebook page (DrNickvT), or on Twitter tagging me (@DrNic1) and #TheIncrementalist or you can click this link to generate a ready-made tweet to fill in.
About the Show
For years Dr. Nick van Terheyden aka Dr. Nick, has served as a voice on the impact of new technologies on healthcare, earning a reputation as a leading authority on where the future of medicine is going. Combining powers of observation and real world experience, Dr. Nick has seen many predictions come true and makes the case that innovations in healthcare can be accomplished incrementally, not just by moonshot events. Tune in to hear Dr. Nick: The Incrementalist and his guests discuss what the future of healthcare looks like, how we will get there, and what it will take to improve healthcare for all.
This article was originally published on the Dr. Nick – The Incrementalist blog and is republished here with permission.
