Welcome to This Month in Digital Health, where I summarize articles that recently caught my eye to explain why I think they’re important. With ViVE and HIMSS behind us, I figured I’d shy away from all the product and partnership announcements that made headlines, which explains why this is a bit shorter than usual. There were still some compelling stories out there, from the usual AI and rural health challenges to ruminations about how seemingly competing health data exchange efforts will in fact complement each other.

AI: Everything everywhere all at once at the same time. A Health Affairs paper argued healthcare needs its AI bubble to burst, as organizations are chasing “innovation without substance.” It doesn’t help that large language models are susceptible to misinformation (just like people), health systems are still wrestling with human-in-the-loop approaches (focusing too much on individual outputs and not enough on scalable frameworks), and LLMs are impacting how people interact with search results (fewer clicks on reputable hospital websites, which of course isn’t a good thing). If nothing else, I suppose, robots can run the hospital cafeteria.

Rural health: Because healthcare loooooves to rush into things. KFF Health News is all over rural health transformation, where proposals range from investing most of the money (Wyoming) to using robots in maternity care (Alabama). Plus, apparently there’s some tension about plans that were drafted and approved, in no small part because states didn’t really have a lot of time to come up plans. That very well may have been the point – I’ve heard folks argue that CMS was looking to fund projects that were well past the planning stage – but the whole thing’s starting to look rather messy, if not ill-conceived.

CMS: TEFCA and the Health Tech Ecosystem are totally besties. It’s not the best look when you launch a data-sharing initiative and then have to come out and say it’s not competing with an existing data-sharing initiative with similar characteristics and motivations, as CMS and ASTP had to do regarding TEFCA and the Health Tech Ecosystem. Apparently, the ecosystem is an “accelerator,” and its work may (or may not) be folded into TEFCA at some point. Glad we cleared that all up.

ACCESS: With rates this low, who needs a doctor? The proposed annual rates for the ACCESS model (Advancing Chronic Care with Effective, Scalable Solutions) are, um, well, they’re not very high at all. A lot of folks are arguing that’s exactly the point, as the model’s meant to attract 1) entities that take a digital-first approach to chronic care and 2) patients that don’t necessarily need a lot of in-person care. I get it, but I’m not sure going out of your way to alienate physicians is really the best approach.

In other news:

• Healthcare is staring at “an existential tipping point” within the next five years, according to Ann Jordan, president and CEO of the Healthcare Financial Management Association. She’s hopeful the industry embrace value-based care a bit more. We shall see.
• Closing care gaps in vulnerable populations takes a lot of work, much of it non-medical. University of Chicago Medicine is putting in that work – and sticking to it.
• Medicare’s version of the Virtual Diabetes Prevention Program has far fewer participants than the CDC’s health plan and employer version. Coverage through the end of 2029 will hopefully close change that.
• I’m not usually one to feature interviews with vendor execs here, but 3-D printed patient-specific surgical instruments meet a unique medical need and are pretty cool.

See you next month, when there will be 95% fewer healthcare IT articles featuring photos of well-dressed people sitting in comfy chairs and holding microphones.