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Digital rectal exams (DREs) typify much of what's wrong with our health care system.  Men dread going to go get them, they're unpleasant, they vividly illustrate the physician-patient hierarchy, and -- oh, by the way -- they apparently don't actually provide much value. By the same token, routine pelvic exams for healthy women also don't have any proven value either. The recent conclusions about DREs come from a new study.  One of the researchers, Dr. Ryan Terlecki, declared: "The evidence suggests that in most cases, it is time to abandon the digital rectal exam (DRE).  Our findings will likely be welcomed by patients and doctors alike"...

With all the changes happening to Meaningful Use, Quality Measurement, and MACRA in 2016, I’ve been asked many questions by many organizations to help them plan for the future. As I’ve said many times, one of the great challenges we have is that the 2015 Edition final rule has an enormous scope extending beyond Meaningful Use with the notion that it can be coupled to every government healthcare IT program. Standards need to be based on requirements and specific use cases with little optionality, so creating a broadly scoped rule before the use cases are known just doesn’t work...

A recent post highlighted how artificial intelligence (AI) is already playing important roles in health care, and concluded that expanded use of AI may be ready for us before we are ready for it.  One example of the kind of problem we'll face is: who would we sue if care that an AI recommended or performed went wrong? Because, you know, always follow the money. Last week Stanford's One Hundred Year Study On Artificial Intelligence released its 2016 report, looking at the progress and potential of AI, as well as some recommendations for public policy...