| | | | |  | | By Ruth Reader, Daniel Payne, Shawn Zeller, Carmen Paun and Erin Schumaker | | | | | 
Current AI tools pose a danger, a California nursing union says. | Win McNamee/Getty Images | Nurses in California are fighting the use of artificial intelligence in their workplaces. How so? Members of the California Nurses Association protested outside Kaiser Permanente’s San Francisco Medical Center this week. They said they fear the health care firm’s adoption of AI tools undermines their profession and puts patients at risk. “What we are witnessing in our hospitals is the degradation and devaluation of our nursing practice through the use of these untested technologies,” Michelle Gutierrez-Vo, the association’s president, said in a statement. Wide angle: In November, Bonnie Castillo, executive director of National Nurses United — of which the California association is part — attended an AI policy forum sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and told the New York Democrat that AI limits decision-making in health care settings and jeopardizes patients’ lives. The nurses have four policy objectives:
- Ensure that health care employers demonstrate that AI tools are safe and effective, and serve all patients equally before deploying them
- Prohibit the collection and use of patient data — even deidentified data — without informed consent
- Bargain over employers’ decision to implement AI and how it’s deployed and affects workers
- Protect workers from AI surveillance and data mining
Kaiser responds: The firm told NBC that it deploys AI to help nurses do their jobs better, but the tools don’t replace human judgment. “Our physicians and care teams are always at the center of decision making,” the company said in a statement. Why it matters: So far, no federal laws or regulations restrict how employers implement AI. In December, the Department of Health and Human Services finalized rules for health care AI that requires developers to disclose how the software was developed, what data it was trained on, how it works, how it was validated externally and how they plan to monitor performance over time. Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration has issued guidelines around AI tools that don’t have the force of regulation. Both agencies say they don’t want to impede innovation. What’s next? States might take the lead on legislation. AI-related bills more than quadrupled in 2023, according to the Business Software Alliance Foundation, and California is considering dozens. The legislative push in Sacramento this year targets the technology’s potential to eliminate vast numbers of jobs, intrude on workers’ privacy, imperil public safety and make decisions based on biased algorithms, our Jeremy B. White reported.
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Washington, D.C. | Shawn Zeller/POLITICO | This is where we explore the ideas and innovators shaping health care. Supporters of ‘chronoworking’ believe it would be beneficial to let people work at odd hours, whenever they feel most awake and alert, depending on their circadian rhythms, Fox Business reports. Share any thoughts, news, tips and feedback with Carmen Paun at cpaun@politico.com, Daniel Payne at dpayne@politico.com, Ruth Reader at rreader@politico.com or Erin Schumaker at eschumaker@politico.com. Send tips securely through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp.
| | |  | Increased staffing at nursing homes — central to a new rule the Biden administration finalized this week — could affect how often antipsychotic drugs are overprescribed to patients in the facilities, according to research published in JAMA Network Open on Tuesday. Researchers from a number of universities, including New York University and Fordham University, compared the levels of inappropriate use of those drugs in facilities with different staffing levels. Patient advocates sometimes call antipsychotic drugs “chemical restraints” because they can be used to control patient behavior and often come with a number of risks for older patients. Higher staffing levels appeared to lead to less inappropriate use of the drugs, especially in facilities serving “severely deprived,” or low-income, communities. Why it matters: The overuse of antipsychotic drugs in nursing homes is a concern for the Department of Health and Human Services and state health agencies. Even so: The paper’s authors cautioned that the research didn’t prove a causal link between staffing levels and drug use. And the researchers classify staffing similar to that mandated by the Biden administration’s new regulation as “marginal.” Facilities with staffing levels similar to those required by the new rule generally had lower inappropriate antipsychotic use than nursing homes with less staff. But facilities that exceeded the new standard did better, the data showed.
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The military needs to stop treating obesity as a lifestyle choice, a group of ex-servicemembers says. | John Moore/Getty Images | The military should boost servicemembers’ access to antiobesity drugs to combat the “existential threat” the condition poses to national security. That’s according to the American Security Project, an advocacy group of ex-military officers and politicians, in a letter Wednesday to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. “The Department of Defense must take decisive action to rectify systemic issues preventing individuals with obesity from accessing evidence-based treatments including behavioral therapy, anti-obesity medications, and bariatric surgery,” the group, including former New Jersey GOP Gov. Christine Todd Whitman and Rep. Donald Beyer (D-Va.), wrote. Why it matters: The American Security Project, which has long warned that obesity is reducing the number of recruits who qualify to join the military, says the problem is growing among active-duty troops. — The share of active-duty servicemembers who are obese has more than doubled over 10 years, from 10.4 percent in 2012 to 21.6 percent in 2022, the group said. — The share who are obese or overweight is 68 percent. — The problem continues to plague military recruiters. Forty-four percent of Americans ages 18 to 25 were too overweight to serve in 2018. Now, 57 percent are either clinically overweight or obese. What to do? The group says all obese servicemembers should be referred to a credentialed obesity doctor, registered dietitian or bariatric physician to determine treatment. The military services need to update policies on obesity treatment that treat the disease like a lifestyle problem and educate doctors about the availability of effective medications, said Dr. Richele Corrado, obesity medicine specialist for the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. Corrado expects updated policies would boost the prescribing of not only new injectable semaglutide drugs, but also oral medications like Phentermine. The number of servicemembers receiving obesity medication has grown sharply since the Pentagon authorized the drugs in 2018 but remains at a low level overall. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
