Proposition: We should listen less to people described as “rock stars” unless they are in fact rock stars.

Sepsis hospitalizations have tripled in Mass. But is it real or a billing game? - The Boston Globe Hospitals and insurers are harnessing the power of artificial intelligence and other tech tools to protect their businesses.

Well reported story on the coding arms race, now fueled by AI www.bostonglobe.com/2026/03/20/b...

As usual, the rich systems use this to get even richer…and while not mentioned in the article, this has important implications for quality measurement too.

Start with the cafe. Then shop

I dream of a world where this is a top 10 problem. Remember when we used to have debates about this and NYU med school and SPRINT? Golden age

lol. Read the room acp

Pretty galling what the first urologist tried to do here. www.statnews.com/2026/01/21/w...

Same wish this year

Why do you hate innovation

Said title…

There’s a lot going on, but I’m going to plug my favorite authors on my favorite esoteric/devastating/unknown-to-HSRs methods issue, with the best paper title I’ve seen in a long time psycnet.apa.org/record/2025-...

We hope you can join us & @pennchibe.bsky.social for a virtual keynote presentation from Amy Finkelstein about rethinking common inferences in healthcare.

Wednesday 10/29 at 12 PM ET. Register here: https://bit.ly/3VIvfC2

Predictive model teaching slides

Bold! I thought increasing payment to PCPs would fix all our problems.

Welp. I suppose this is comforting

Yes. And wondering if anybody in the single payer movement is absorbing any lessons here

Friends don't let friends give preregistration a bad name. Exploratory findings are fine; you just have to label them!

Oh yes. And the peculiar failure to cite any of those prior papers

Not a fan of any disease that begins “new world”

Proposition: Hearing the words “best practice” is a near-perfect indicator of terrible decision making.

…but it might work for us

Yes. I don’t think the senders have any appreciation for how much I subliminally hate any politician who allows their name to be used in donation spam. It’s unavoidable even if I like them, rationally. Little by little the spam is hardwiring name-associated revulsion in my reptile brain.

My fealty to the leader who will stop the spam

Concern About Predictive Performance of a Pain Sensitivity Biomarker To the Editor Chowdhury et al1 evaluated a biomarker for pain sensitivity, combining peak alpha frequency and corticomotor excitability. The authors report outstanding performance (validation set area...

Serious concerns about a new cortical biomarker for pain sensitivity

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

We (with @tspisak.bsky.social, @christianbuchel.bsky.social) published a commentary on Chowdhury, Bi et al. (2025, JAMA Neurology) raising serious concerns about their reported results.

👇 1/13

An Attack on the Medical Establishment Buried in an 1,800-Page Regulation

Kinda misleading headline, but article covers some very important proposed changes to the role of the RUC and other aspects of RBRVS.
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/21/u...

Ma’am, would you like several fiddly tests whose results about 1% of the medical community can interpret correctly followed by *maybe* a surgery or would you like a once a day pill that will probably sort things?

Yesssss. I cannot describe my satisfaction with this post.

Time for your yearly reminder that “We need less research, better research, and research done for the right reasons”. #OTD 1948 Douglas Altman b (d 3 June 2018) “One of the most influential medical statisticians of the past 50 years” he led reforms in medical research reliability & reporting. 1/3

#ARM25

Like, what does it mean when a Medicaid program increases its spending on primary care? Seems critical to know if provider taxes also increased and what if anything is known about their incidence on PCPs. Ditto equity investments accompanied by tax hikes. Etc.

Mandatory reading for health services researchers: recent BCBSMA Foundation primer on Medicaid provider taxes www.bluecrossmafoundation.org/about-us/new...

This has to be one of the most important aspects of Medicaid policy that almost nobody knows about. Critical to interpreting Medicaid spending