Wednesday, June 10, 2026

AI Guest Column 02: Does Medicare Still Use COBOL? A Book Chapter by Claude Opus 4.8

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A previous blog entry provided a book chapter, written by Chat GPT, on Medicare claims processing software ("Is it really still in COB...

AI Guest Column 01: Does Medicare Still Use COBOL? A Book Chapter by Chat GPT

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AI CORNER:  Written by Chat GPT. One of a series.  Offered as an example of current AI-managed writing products; not verified. See also: A s...
Tuesday, June 9, 2026

AI Guest Column: Oz and Mulligan on Saving Healthcare Costs

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 AI CORNER: Chat GPT Two Senior CMS Officials on "Saving Costs" - June 2026 MedCityNews, June 9, 2026 (Katie Adams): CMS Dr. Oz on...

CMMI ACCESS Program: Can Well-Intentioned Goals Conceal Adverse Incentives?

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Header:  CMMI produces a JAMA Op Ed on its "ACCESS" technology and chronic care program.  I used an AI-generated essay to explain...

AI Attempts to Classify 100 New PLA Codes (Gets Migraine)

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I asked Claude Opus and Chat GPT to make a classification system for the 102 PLA codes being considered for this summer's Annual Lab Mee...
Monday, June 8, 2026

News Summary: WaPo: HHS Wants to Bring Physicians and AI Together

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  On June 4, 2026, Washington Post has a lead aritlce, "Push to bring AI doctors into American medicine," by Elizabeth Dwoskin. __...
Sunday, June 7, 2026

AMA's New Digital Pathology Codes in "Category III": What If They're Not on the CLFS?

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Key Lesson: In 2026, AMA CPT began assigning whole-slide-imaging digital pathology codes to Category III, rather than the PLA pathway used f...
Saturday, June 6, 2026

How You Get CMS to Liberalize a Burdensome Rule (Case Study: Physical Therapy Orders)

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Why You May Care...  Many stakeholders approach CMS each year with a request to liberalize one or another rule - be it an administrative pol...
Wednesday, June 3, 2026

CMS Releases Data for "87798" Billing in 2024

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On May 21, 2026, CMS released data by lab and by CPT code (also by physician and CPT code) for Part B payments in CY2024. There's been a...
Tuesday, June 2, 2026

Predicting the Scientific Future: From UCSF's Robert Wachter

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Robert Wachter of UCSF is both a medical leader and a futurist. In his newest book, A GIANT LEAP, he discusses AI in medical care.  From his...

CMS Releases Rich Cloud Database for CY2024 Claims, Medicare Part B

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 If you love CMS Part B data, Christmas comes every May or June, when CMS releases extensive cloud data for all labs and all  physician prov...

A New Commercial Source for Rapid Complete Medicare Claims Research LUMA CLAIMS

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CMS has some free databases for Part B claims - like this one for annual Excel spreadsheets and this one for a cloud database x CPT code x...
Sunday, May 31, 2026

Using AI: (1) Finding Half-Remembered Papers; (2) Finding Papers of Major Importance. For: Computational Pathology.

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Summary of This Long Post :Creatively Using AI at Work Case Study: Digital Pathology This blog begins with an unexpectedly mundane task: fin...
Saturday, May 30, 2026

A Must-Read Article: Use of Comprehensive Genomic Profiling in Metastatic Cancer of Medicare Beneficiaries

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JAMA Network Open publishes a must-read paper on comprehensive genomic profiling (CGP) by Chow et al.   The paper headlines "a differen...
Thursday, May 28, 2026

NGS MAC Updates LCD in a Few Weeks

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 I hear many people complain that it takes years - literally, years - to get updates to LCDs, let alone, consider opening a NEW LCD on some ...