Daily Briefing for October 27, 2026

Medicare's AI prior authorization pilot cuts service use, JAMA study finds The voices on this episode are generated, and so is the script, from the day's post at Physician in the Loop. Every fact in the post links to its source. Read the post and its sources Get the free email briefing Use of services covered by Medicare's AI-assisted prior authorization pilot fell about 15% to 20% in its first six months in the six participating states, according to a JAMA research letter published Oct. 26. The authors, Hannah Neprash of the University of Minnesota and Michael Barnett of Brown University, said the data cannot show whether the care patients did not receive was wasteful or necessary. Services that were scheduled for the Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction (WISeR) model but never put under review showed no decline, and the reduction in epidural steroid injections narrowed from about 21% to about 9% between the first and second quarters, the University of Minnesota said . The same day, the Department of Health and Human Services finalized its HTI-5 rule, which removes the requirement that certified health record software carry standard information on how predictive AI tools were built and tested. In this episode Use of services in Medicare's AI-assisted prior authorization pilot falls 15% to 20% in its first six months, JAMA study finds HHS finalizes HTI-5, dropping the AI 'model card' requirements for decision support tools in certified health record software Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak reaches 9,704 confirmed cases in Congo with imported cases in Kenya and Nigeria; Uganda orders 21-day quarantine South Carolina rural hospitals get six months of free cybersecurity help from Microsoft, Cisco and others under a state and White House pilot Mass General Brigham teleneurology and telestroke program reaches more than 20 community and rural hospitals in six months Heidi AI scribe enrollment cuts note time 1.2 minutes per encounter at Beth Israel Lahey Health but does not change after-hours closure or wRVUs Thrombectomy improves 90-day function in mild large-vessel stroke and at 24 to 72 hours, two NEJM trials from China find U.S. measles cases reach 4,588 in 2026, double the 2025 total, with 96% tied to outbreaks Sutter Health adds heart failure patients to its remote monitoring program, using BodyPort's FDA-cleared scale