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Shortly after dropping two Harvard scientists with financial conflicts of interest, the national organization assembling a committee to assess the evidence about drinking and health has chosen four new panelists, among them another Harvard professor who also has financial ties to the alcohol industry. The committee’s work, under the auspices of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, will be used to update the federal government’s dietary guidelines, which advise Americans on nutrition and diet, including how much they should or should not drink. (Rabin, 1/10)

The Justice Department soon will propose a regulation to advise publicly owned healthcare providers on meeting requirements they offer patients with disabilities accessible medical diagnostic equipment. The pending regulation will feature guidance for how providers including hospitals that are operated by state or local governments can meet Americans with Disabilities Act standards for items such as examination tables, scales, dental chairs, X-ray scanners and mammography equipment, the Justice Department announced Tuesday. (Bennett, 1/10)

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is penalizing some dialysis facilities. ... An observational study of nearly 2,200 dialysis facilities participating in the agency’s End Stage Renal Disease Treatment Choices model found safety-net facilities serving mostly Black and Hispanic patients more frequently experienced CMS reimbursement cuts as high as 5% in the first year of the payment model for not moving more treatment to the home. The results of the study by researchers at five universities were published Tuesday in JAMA Network. (Eastabrook, 1/10)

As more care moves into the home, family caregivers are becoming an essential linchpin in the healthcare system. Approximately 53 million adults provide unpaid care to spouses, parents, children or other relatives, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The amount of time such folks spent caring for family members increased from 9 hours a week in 2020 to 26 hours in 2023, according to a study released in mid-December by insurance and benefits company Guardian. (Eastabrook, 1/10)

Elevance Health is launching a program across more than 20 states to provide smartphones to some eligible Medicaid enrollees in hopes of improving their healthcare access. The smartphones will come with unlimited data, talk and texting service at no cost to some members of select affiliated Medicaid plans who are eligible for the Federal Communications Commission’s Affordable Connectivity Program, according to a news release Wednesday. (Berryman, 1/10)

Oscar Health expects the number of people signed up for its marketplace plans to grow by nearly a third compared with last year, CEO Mark Bertolini said during a presentation at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference Wednesday. The company anticipates increasing its membership by 31% to 1.3 million when open enrollment ends Jan. 16, he said. Most of Oscar Health’s growth has come from new members in existing markets, although “retention in enrollment for this year is going to be as high as it’s ever been,” Bertolini said. (Tepper, 1/10)

Generative AI’s earliest applications in medicine have largely focused on curing not patients, but the plague of productivity physicians lose to digital documentation. Now, research suggests a way that large language models like ChatGPT could benefit both patients and providers: by automatically extracting a patient’s social needs from reams of text in their clinical records. (Palmer, 1/11)