CareTracker, operating as Amazing Charts, reported a data breach affecting its EHR system due to a third party's security incident. The breach potentially compromised patient names, diagnoses, treatment details and health insurance information. In another breach, Marshfield Clinic Health System in Wisconsin and Michigan reported that an unauthorized entity gained access to employee email accounts and may have copied information including medical record numbers, diagnosis and treatment information and health insurance information.

Data breaches often hit hospitals before ransomware. Join AHA's John Riggi and Celerium on Nov. 19 at 4pm ET to learn how boards, CEOs, compliance, and IT leaders can achieve 30-minute breach detection and fight rising third-party risk.

Aetna is implementing a new payment policy for Medicare Advantage plans that may reduce payments to hospitals. The policy ties inpatient reimbursement to severity and MCG inpatient criteria, potentially reducing payments for stays shorter than five midnights and conflicting with Medicare's two-midnight rule, writes certified documentation integrity practitioner Cheryl Ericson.

Major EHR vendors are marketing their platforms as "AI-native," a term that lacks a standardized definition and may be an overstatement. Oracle's EHR features voice navigation and embedded AI agents, and Athenahealth's platform integrates AI throughout clinical workflows. Adding generative AI or summarization tools to an EHR system is an enhancement, but embedding AI deeply within clinical workflows "can absolutely change usability," said Crystal Broj, enterprise chief transformation officer at MUSC.

Gemini 1.0 produced higher quality content about antimicrobial resistance than Claude and ChatGPT versions 3.5 and 4.0, researchers reported in BMJ Health & Care Informatics. Despite referring the user to experts after only five prompts, Gemini provided readable, context-sensitive, lexically diverse answers with a positive tone. However, all the models' outputs were at a high-school readability level, and they were biased toward English-language training data. Researchers said that all LLM-generated health information should be reviewed by an expert.

The US spends $5.6 trillion annually on health care -- more than any country except China -- but health outcomes trail those of other nations, writes Robert Pearl, a clinical professor of plastic surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine and a faculty member at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Part of the problem is that the government, corporations, employees and rural hospitals are focused on the wrong things. Pearl suggests consolidating inpatient facilities in crowded markets and creating centers of excellence with transportation options; focusing on disease prevention and home monitoring; and rewarding value, not volume.