ChatGPT Won’t Fix Healthcare, But It Might Save Doctors Some Time

In a healthcare industry still burdened with 1960s technology, generative AI may offer a little relief — but companies are still working to overhaul a broken system that’s keeping doctors and nurses more focused on paperwork than patients.

By Katie Jennings and Rashi Shrivastava, Forbes Staff


Every week, Eli Gelfand, chief of general cardiology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, wastes a lot of time on letters he doesn’t want to write — all of them to insurers disputing his recommendations. A new drug for a heart failure patient. A CAT scan for a patient with chest pain. A new drug for a patient with stiff heart syndrome. “We’re talking about appeal letters for things that are life-saving,” says Gelfand, who is also an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School.

So when OpenAI’s ChatGPT began making headlines for generally coherent artificial intelligence-generated text, Gelfand saw an opportunity to save some time. He fed the bot some basic information about a diagnosis and the medications he’d prescribed (leaving out the patient’s name) and asked it to write an appeal letter with references to scientific papers.

ChatGPT gave him a viable letter — the first of many. And while the references may sometimes be wrong, Gelfand told Forbes the letters require “minimal editing.” Crucially, they have cut the time he spends writing them down to a minute on average. And they work.

Gelfand has used ChatGPT for some 30 appeal letters, most of which have been approved by insurers, he says. But he’s under no illusion that ChatGPT or the AI that powers it is going to save the U.S. healthcare system anytime soon. “It’s basically making my life a little easier and hopefully getting the patients the medications they need at a higher rate,” Gelfand says. “This is a workaround solution for a problem that shouldn’t really exist.”

That problem: The U.S. spends more money on healthcare administration than any other country. In 2019, around a quarter of the $3.8 trillion spent on healthcare went to administrative issues like the ones bemoaned by Gelfand. It’s estimated around $265 billion of that was “wasteful” — unnecessary expenditures necessitated by the antiquated technology that undergirds the U.S. healthcare system. Gelfand can use a chatbot to electronically generate an appeal letter. But he has to fax it to the insurer. And that encapsulates the challenge facing companies hoping to build time-saving AI back-office tools for a healthcare system stuck in the 1960s.


Cut The “Scut”

The fax machine isn’t going away anytime soon, says Nate Gross, cofounder and chief strategy officer of Doximity, a San Francisco-based social networking platform used by two million doctors and other healthcare professionals in the U.S. That’s why Doximity’s new workflow tool, DocsGPT, a chatbot that helps doctors write a wide range of letters and certificates, is connected to its online faxing tool.

“Our design thesis is to make it as easy as possible for doctors to interface with

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How to avoid the daylight saving time hangover : Shots

Early mornings may still feel dark and wintry, but the season is about to change. This weekend most of the U.S. will “spring forward” — setting clocks forward one hour — as daylight saving time begins.

Maja Hitij/Getty Images


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Early mornings may still feel dark and wintry, but the season is about to change. This weekend most of the U.S. will “spring forward” — setting clocks forward one hour — as daylight saving time begins.

Maja Hitij/Getty Images

As clocks march ahead and daylight saving time begins this weekend, you may be anxious about losing an hour of sleep and how to adjust to this change.

Even though it’s technically just one hour lost due to the time change, the amount of sleep deprivation due to disrupted sleep rhythm lasts for many days and often throws people off schedule, leading to cumulative sleep loss.

Many studies have demonstrated that there is an increased risk of heart attack, stroke and high blood pressure associated with sleep deprivation. Workplace injuries increase and so do automobile accidents. Adolescents often find it harder to wake up in time to get to school and may have difficulties with attention and school performance or worsening of mental health problems.

Is there something to be done to help to deal with this loss of sleep and change of body clock timing?

Of course.

We lead a sleep evaluation center at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and regularly see patients who are dealing with sleep loss and whose internal clocks are not synchronized with external time. Our experience has shown us that it’s important to prepare, as much as possible, for the time shift that occurs every spring.

Here are some quick tips to prepare yourself for the time shift.

Don’t start with a “sleep debt”

Ensure that you and, if you’re a parent, your child get adequate sleep regularly, especially leading up to the time change each year. Most adults need anywhere from seven to nine hours of sleep daily to perform adequately. Children have varying requirements for sleep depending on their age.

Earlier to bed — and to rise

Going to bed — and for parents, putting your kids to bed — 15 to 20 minutes earlier each night in the week before the time change is ideal. Having an earlier wake time can help you get to sleep earlier.

Try to wake up an hour earlier than is customary on Saturday, the day before the time change. If you aren’t able to make changes to your sleep schedule in advance, then keep a very consistent wake time on weekdays as well as weekends to adjust to the time change more easily.

Use light to your advantage

Light is the strongest cue for adjusting the internal body clock. Expose yourself to bright light upon waking as you start getting up earlier in the week before daylight saving time starts. This resets your

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The Well being Charges of Daylight Preserving Time | Healthiest Communities

This weekend’s time transform is about far more than just remembering to set the clocks ahead – it also has implications for the nation’s wellness.

Most of The usa will get rid of an hour this weekend as the clocks spring ahead to observe Daylight Saving Time. Along with the shift comes a reduction of snooze and a disruption of organic circadian rhythms, which can have wide general public overall health implications.

For the pursuing 6 months, the daylight several hours will be shifted an hour later on, bringing Us residents later sunrises and sunsets. For most counties near the eastern boundary of their time zones, this signifies the sunshine will increase involving 6:30 and 7:30 a.m. and set in between 6:30 and 7 p.m. On the western facet of each and every time zone, the solar will rise just after 7:30 a.m. and established following 7:30 p.m. As the days get for a longer time, sunrises will creep back again while sunsets will keep on to get later.

In 2020, the American Academy of Rest Drugs formally endorsed the abolition of the exercise of Daylight Conserving Time, citing overall health threats affiliated with the time disruption. Analysis indicates that the shift has a a lot more profound effect in locations in the western element of time zones, a phenomenon in some cases referred to as the “western edge impact.”

Among the hazards discovered to be involved with the time transform is an observed increase in coronary heart attacks, which has been documented by a variety of scientific studies in excess of new yrs. Applying a ten years of hospital data, researchers in Finland also observed an linked maximize in strokes in the times next a changeover.

The dangers to public health introduced on by springing ahead increase to an maximize in injuries triggered by accidents as very well. In 2016, a review printed in the American Financial Journal located that the spring changeover was believed to be responsible for an improve of a lot more than 30 website traffic fatalities yearly. A 2020 Recent Biology study corroborated that report with related findings, when a different study analyzing the mining industry discovered a measurable enhance in office accidents in the rapid aftermath of the change.

Exploration has also demonstrated that the change has an adverse result on psychological well being. An Australian study linked bigger prices of suicide to the time adjustment, noting the affect of disrupting pure rest rhythms. Gurus caution that the shift can be specially complicated on teens.

Dr. Norman E. Rosenthal, the psychiatrist who initial explained seasonal affective ailment, has created the case that the change to standard time in the winter may well be significantly tough on people who undergo from the condition.

Seasonal affective problem is estimated to affect all around 5% of the grownup population of the U.S., with locations in the north imagined to be more prone. In accordance to Google Trends info from this

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‘A ticking time bomb’: healthcare under threat across western Europe | Health

For decades, western Europe’s national healthcare systems have been widely touted as among the best in the world.

But an ageing population, more long-term illnesses, a continuing recruitment and retainment crisis plus post-Covid exhaustion have combined, this winter, to create a perfect healthcare storm that is likely to get worse before it gets better.

“All countries of the region face severe problems related to their health and care workforce,” the World Health Organization’s Europe region said in a report earlier this year, warning of potentially dire consequences without urgent government action.

In France, there are fewer doctors now than in 2012. More than 6 million people, including 600,000 with chronic illnesses, do not have a regular GP and 30% of the population does not have adequate access to health services.

In Germany, 35,000 care sector posts were vacant last year, 40% more than a decade ago, while a report this summer said that by 2035 more than a third of all health jobs could be unfilled. Facing unprecedented hospital overcrowding due to “a severe shortage of nurses”, even Finland will need 200,000 new workers in the health and social care sector by 2030.

In Spain, the health ministry announced in May that more than 700,000 people were waiting for surgery, and 5,000 frontline GPs and paediatricians in Madrid have been on strike for nearly a month in protest at years of underfunding and overwork.

Efforts to replace retiring workers were already “suboptimal”, the WHO Europe report said, but had to now be urgently extended to “improve retention and tackle an expected increase in younger people leaving the workforce due to burnout, ill health and general dissatisfaction”.

In a third of countries in the region, at least 40% of doctors were aged 55 or over, the report said. Even when younger practitioners stayed despite stress, long hours and often low pay, their reluctance to work in remote rural areas or deprived inner cities had created “medical deserts” that were proving almost impossible to fill.

“All of these threats represent a ticking time bomb … likely to lead to poor health outcomes, long waiting times, many preventable deaths and potentially even health system collapse,” warned Hans Kluge, the WHO regional director for Europe.

In some countries the worst shortages are among GPs, with France in particular paying the price for previous planning errors. Back in 1971, it capped the number of second-year medical students through a so-called numerus clausus aimed at cutting health spending and raising earnings.

The result was a collapse in annual student numbers – from 8,600 in the early 1970s, to 3,500 in 1993 – and while intakes have since climbed somewhat and the cap was lifted altogether two years ago, it will take years for the size of the workforce to recover.

Even though 10% of France’s GPs now work past retirement age, older doctors leaving the profession outnumbered newcomers entering it last year, when numbers were still 6% down on what they were even a

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Substitute Drugs Promises An additional Sufferer – This Time Lori McClintock, Wife of U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock

Lori McClintock, spouse of California Congressman Tom McClintock, thought in organic treatments and has died from dehydration caused by gastroenteritis and whose swelling was caused by “adverse effects of white mulberry leaf ingestion,” in accordance to the Sacramento County coroner’s report. 

These types of fatalities are deemed accidental but if you wouldn’t consume and travel on the windy roadways of the Pacific Coast Highway, you shouldn’t imagine in folks drugs, common drugs, choice medication, complementary medication, integrative medication, or whatsoever else naturopaths and nutritional supplement charlatans are contacting their perilous revenue-generating techniques these times.

And definitely do not think ‘weight loss’ gimmicks on the Internet. As the McClintock family figured out, the consequences can be disastrous.


A single illustration of advertising authorized by the attempts of the similar political get together that pushed unlimited college student bank loan debt off on a era in the 1980s and the close of nuclear vitality off on us in the 1990s. This is not the merchandise behind her demise, as considerably as anyone is familiar with. But I guess Re

To be reasonable, nutritional supplements are not generally hazardous. Usually they are just overpriced placebos that the Clinton administration exempted from genuine Food and drug administration oversight in 1994. The President who made nonsense purveyor Mark Hyman famed did a earth of superior fo these who believe that Science Is A Wide Company Conspiracy – for the reason that that pondering was dominated by his political occasion.(1)

Condolences to Rep. McClintock. As an individual who lately missing my spouse (melanoma) I can sense his ache. Be sure to, if you have an sickness, go see a qualified professional medical professional alternatively of any particular person whose title finishes in “path” or who advertises strategies on a site, and if you want to shed excess weight, consume a lot less and training additional. In 100 percent of medical trials, that will work, while if health supplements could survive double-blind clinical trials they’d be called “drugs.”

Note:

(1) And for the most component it however is. COVID-19 flipped the script on anti-science crank representation, while. The anti-vaccine had been overwhelmingly on the remaining until 2021 and now they are declaring to be the Bash of Science mainly because Republicans deny the COVID-19 vaccine additional – all though Democrats are still denying most other fields of science, from biology to zoology. And Rep. McClintock is a Republican, and even far more uncommon in California a conservative, so that will lend proof to the 2022 belief that Republicans oppose science, but gals are also considerably much more possible to embrace “organic” and health supplement marketing.

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Quite a few 9/11 very first responders even now combating for overall health rewards 21 a long time later on

NEWYou can now pay attention to Fox News articles!

Hundreds of to start with responders and employees who have experienced from well being problems in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist assaults are nevertheless battling for wellness added benefits and experience a essential funding shortfall in a program built to advantage them.

“The 20 yrs immediately after 9/11 decimated the responder neighborhood. The following 20 decades is going to eradicate the 9/11 responders,”John Feal, founder of the FealGood Basis, an advocacy team for 9/11 responders and survivors, told Fox Information Electronic.

Feal, a retired design worker who dropped portion of his foot whilst operating at Ground Zero in the aftermath of the assaults, started the FealGood Foundation to reward responders who have suffered from many wellbeing troubles related to the fallout of the attacks. 

The organization structured numerous protests on Capitol Hill and pressured lawmakers to act, scoring a victory with the Globe Trade Middle Health and fitness Program that Congress accredited in 2015.

Legendary 9/11 Shots AND THE PHOTOGRAPHERS WHO SHOT THEM: Here ARE THEIR Tales

Rescue employees sift via debris at Floor Zero of what remains of the Entire world Trade Middle twin towers internet site Sept. 24, 2001.
(REUTERS/John Roca/New York Day-to-day Information/pool)

The monthly bill pays the health-related charges of very first responders, many of whom have suffered from respiratory health conditions, digestive ailments and cancers as a consequence of their publicity to contaminants at the site of the Twin Towers. Others experienced life-altering accidents that need consistent treatment and rehabilitation.

Feal is yet again pushing for lawmakers to choose action, this time on a funding shortfall in the system, which he reported will be $3 billion shorter someday right before 2025.

Even though the invoice authorizes funding through 2090, Feal said it did not account for the cost of wellness treatment inflation, a challenge he said will go away numerous responders unable to fork out their clinical charges.

“In 2015, there were being 76,000 men and women in the Planet Trade Center Well being Treatment Application. Now there’s shut to 118,000 folks in the system,” Feal reported. “Nobody took into thing to consider clinical inflation.”

The added $3 billion in funding would ensure people today maintain the physicians, nurses and administrators who have been operating with them on the work although also producing absolutely sure responders keep on to get the remedies and treatment options they require.

Hundreds of low-paid workers that worked on the perimeter of the disaster site haven't been nearly as visible as those who worked at the site itself.

Hundreds of small-paid out personnel that worked on the perimeter of the catastrophe web site have not been just about as visible as people who labored at the site alone.
(AP)

But the program has not been a catch-all answer for all 9/11 very first responders, some of whom have been excluded from obtaining its rewards, one thing Feal hopes Congress will tackle in addition to the $3 billion in more funding.

“You have been observing stories about persons from the Pentagon that ended up excluded,” Feal mentioned. “The bill will give about 800 to

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