Submitted 9 months ago by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/09/ai_medicare_health/
Fax machines are still used in healthcare!
There is an overwhelming amount of healthcare admin where software could help.
Computers are designed for messaging, data manipulation, deduplication... stuff that people are drowning in because the existing software sucks or doesn't exist.
Yet we see pie-in-the-sky "AI" (LLMs? who knows?) projects being funded.
(I worked as a manager at an Australian general practice. Assuming the US is similar? )
Recently had a “incident” when I found out one of my doctors didn’t have email and I needed to get a form to them to complete and send back before another different doctors appointment. Normally I’d just sigh and drive back but this doctors office would have been another 1hr round trip.
Ended up signing up for a free efax trial then worrying all day as I didn’t get the form back. Call in the morning and they had decided to just fax it to the other doctor for me, and did so shortly after they received the form, but didn’t think it important to tell me. Murder definitely crossed my mind a few times that day.
If I remember correctly, fax machines are still used because they’re a “secure” method of transmitting sensitive patient information. Regulations are keeping that inefficient dinosaur alive.
They’re of course not secure, but people who are tech literate rarely draft this kind of legislation.
They are point to point communication devices with no intermediate storage along the way.
So from a point of view of “don’t store copies of this data except at the sender’s and receiver’s locations, which are already set up to handle sensitive data”, they meet requirements in a simple to implement manner.
Absolutely!
Although… snail mail is also legislated to be secure. It’s not used as often because there is a more convenient, better(?) alternative: fax. I wish some funding for so-called “AI” projects could be used to develop even more convenient/better alternatives to fax. There are messaging protocols but they seemed crazy.
Payment systems are crazy too. Stripe did all the boring work and now there is a convenient interface for payment processing: Stripe’s HTTP API.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
AI algorithms used to determine eligibility for US government healthcare coverage are increasingly verboten, the federal agency Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) told health insurance companies in a memo this week.
The 14-page memo touches on a wide variety of issues related to the Department of Health and Human Services subsidiary’s Medicare Advantage rules published in April last year.
Passages in the memo about algorithms being used to make healthcare decisions, however, seem tailor-made to address controversy over the use of such software in denying Medicare Advantage coverage, which has led to multiple lawsuits.
“An algorithm that determines coverage based on a larger data set instead of the individual patient’s medical history, the physician’s recommendations, or clinical notes would not be compliant [with Medicare rules enacted in April],” CMS said in the memo.
UnitedHealthcare, which offers Medicare Advantage plans, was sued in November by the estates of two elderly men who accused the company of using a faulty AI system to deny care to patients, including reducing the length of hospital recovery stays.
Health insurance firm Humana was also sued on the same grounds in December, and the CMS memo calls out the exact issues raised in the lawsuits – denying inpatient care – as against the law.
The original article contains 545 words, the summary contains 210 words. Saved 61%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Yes, of all the problems in the healthcare system, the problem of letting AI help patients diagnose their own problems is definitely top of the list /s
Oops, no more asking chatgpt about your athlete’s foot
knobbysideup@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
The for profit middlemen that provide no healthcare whatsoever need to be removed from the system entirely.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Even worse: they waste doctors’ time by questioning everything in the hopes that the doctor will just find it easier to do the cheaper options.
Corrupt assholes talked about how a public option would lead to death panels that decide who gets to die. But the current system already has for profit life panels that decide who gets to get their treatments and live and who they can get away with delaying.