Prior authorization is a requirement that health insurers use to exercise more control over enrollees’ medical treatments. If a health plan requires prior authorization for a specific service and providers fail to obtain approval, the treatment is not reimbursed. Prior authorization is controversial because doctors and patients often see it as an unnecessary interference between the doctor and patient relationship. Doctors hate the hassle of seeking permission prior to treating their patients. They also dislike so-called bean counters second guessing their treatment choices.
Category: Devon Herrick
Daylight Savings Time is Bad for Your Health
Sunday morning at 2:00am on March 12th Daylight savings time (DST) officially began for 2023. Today you are no doubt feeling the loss of an hour of sleep, but what is worse is our internal clock (also known as our circadian rhythm) does not necessarily adjust quickly. Thus, we go to bed an hour before our body feels like it’s time and can’t go to sleep for an hour. Yet our alarm clocks still rings at 6:00am, which to our bodies feels like 5:00am.
NY Times: AI Can Read Mammograms as Good or Better than Radiologists
There is a new artificial intelligence (AI) interface that’s been in the news lately called ChatGPT. ChatGPT is a language-based AI chatbot that can do many things humans can do. Some tasks it can do better than humans can do. A week or so ago I asked Would You See an AI Doctor?, Saying:
Radiologists sometimes use computer-aided detection (CAD) to interpret mammograms as a backup to human interpretation. Using both a radiologist and CAD together increases accuracy.
A few days later The New York Times reported on an ongoing test in Hungary, where AI is being used to assist in reading mammograms.
Inside a dark room at Bács-Kiskun County Hospital outside Budapest, Dr. Éva Ambrózay, a radiologist with more than two decades of experience, peered at a computer monitor showing a patient’s mammogram.
Drugs Ordered from Pharmacies Abroad are Illegal (but Mostly Not Opioids)
Hardly a day goes by but what there’s a news article about opioid overdose deaths. Most deaths are tracked back to Fentanyl. According to police almost all prescription opioid drugs purchased on the street contain Fentanyl. China is thought to be the largest producer of Fentanyl and its precursors. To mitigate the risk of dangerous drugs entering the United States, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) receives funding to inspect prescription drugs arriving in the mail from abroad. According to NBC News: