Specialty Focus 11/3/26: Your phone knows you’re at the doctor + Patient satisfaction surveys grade the wrong thing

November 3, 2026 | Volume XV | Issue 44

AI vendors, health systems join physicians in liability for clinical AI

Healthcare Dive reports:

Physicians, AI developers and healthcare organizations that deploy clinical AI tools all bear distinct responsibilities for ensuring the tools do not cause patient harm, the American Medical Association said in an issue brief released last week.

While physicians remain responsible for exercising their clinical judgment, developers are accountable for designing safe AI tools, the physician advocacy group said.

Your phone knows you’re at the doctor, and data brokers do, too

Michael Scaturro

Chris McQueen finished treatment for leukemia a year and a half ago, but the ads for fake cures never stopped.

Juice cleanses to cure cancer, “natural” cancer treatments, clinics in Mexico promising full recovery with little chemotherapy — all appeared on McQueen’s mobile phone during routine oncologist visits and monthly bloodwork.

McQueen and others have taken to social media to vent about companies known as data brokers tracking their whereabouts via their smartphones’ location data, connecting it with other data gathered about them, and then drawing inferences about their health struggles to sell to companies hawking unproven treatments.

“It makes me feel sick to my stomach,” said McQueen, who lives in San Diego and fears some patients are putting themselves at risk, potentially fatally, if they try such untested treatments instead of following their oncologists’ advice.

Patient satisfaction surveys grade the wrong thing

Dr. Gurdev Singh writes for KevinMD:

Nearly every hospital in America now asks its patients a question that no sane person has ever asked a friend: Would you recommend us?

It arrives a few weeks after discharge, in an envelope or an email, along with its relatives. Did the doctors listen carefully? Was the area around your room quiet at night? Were the room and bathroom kept clean? On a scale of zero to ten, how would you rate this hospital? I have never understood what a yes to the big one would mean. Nobody recommends a hospital the way they recommend a plumber.

Californians vote on billionaire tax to replace federal cuts in healthcare funding

France 24

California could become the first US state to tax the net worth of billionaires Tuesday under a ballot measure that has divided liberal leaders nationally and triggered one of the most expensive ballot fights in state history as the ultra-rich scramble to figure out whether they would pay the tax or flee. Proposition 40 would impose a one-time 5% tax on the wealth of Californians whose net worth exceeds $1 billion, with most of the revenue dedicated to replacing federal funding cuts to healthcare.

View video HERE.

Last Word

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