FHIweekly 9/17/26: Research on pregnant opioid users first widely celebrated, then debunked + Delays, tech errors haunt prior auth pilot

September 17, 2026 | Volume XVII | Issue 38

Delays, tech failures abound in CMS' WISeR AI prior auth pilot

Fierce Healthcare reports:

Roughly 1,000 pages of documents produced by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services relative to the opening months of its controversial AI prior authorization program outline sweeping issues such as delayed approvals, miscommunication and provider frustration.

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital and privacy rights nonprofit, recently shared the documents it...

His research on pregnant opioid users was widely celebrated; auditors and experts found major flaws

Amy Yurkanin

When Dr. Craig Towers moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, in 2010, the high-risk obstetrician encountered a crisis unlike anything he’d seen.

Towers, who had practiced for 25 years in California and Wisconsin, found himself caring for an unusual number of pregnant women addicted to painkillers — and delivering newborns who were suffering withdrawal symptoms. Those babies, born shaking and inconsolable and who required weeks of specialized care, were becoming tragic symbols of the region’s raging opioid epidemic. “We were inundated,” Towers later told the Knoxville News Sentinel.

In those initial years in Tennessee, Towers recognized a need — and a research opportunity.

The business case for permanent virtual care

Healthcare IT News reports:

The so-called telehealth cliff – where reimbursement for Medicare telehealth runs out unless Congress acts – is seemingly always just ahead.

Congress in recent years has been content to simply pass temporary fixes, rather than effecting permanent change in policy. So hospitals and health systems stay stuck baking uncertainty into their virtual care plans.

But there may be a change coming when it comes...

Durham water feature likely cause of brain-eating amoeba

CBS 17

An investigation into a teen's death from a "brain-eating" amoeba points to a water feature in Durham as the likely point of exposure.

While the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services cannot conclusively determine where the teen was exposed, a state investigation identified a water feature at El Futuro as "the most likely source" of the infection.

Watch the video HERE.

Inside

FloridaHealthIndustry.com

Publisher of Week in Review, Specialty Focus, FHIweekly & Game Changers