Physician groups reject claim AI is better informed than doctors; FTC probes OpenAI, Anthropic; Pennsylvania House passes health AI bill; Alabama law takes effect
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all episodesTHE SHORT READ
Six national physician groups said Sept. 30 that claims artificial intelligence is better informed than physicians diminish physician expertise and risk undermining patients' trust, after the health secretary praised AI second opinions at a summit.
The American Medical Association, the American College of Surgeons, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and three other groups issued the joint statement after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told the Make America Healthy Again Summit that AI offers a second opinion "much better informed than any doctor in the country," Medical Economics reported. The Federal Trade Commission confirmed an investigation of OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI companies over possible consumer harms.
In the states, the Pennsylvania House passed a bill requiring hospitals and physician offices to disclose AI use to patients and insurers to have a clinician review AI-assisted denials, and an Alabama law requiring a physician or other clinician to make prior authorization denials took effect Oct. 1. AdventHealth opened OpenEvidence to its clinical staff, and HHS launched four programs to bring AI into clinical trials.
THE DETAILS
- Workforce Sept 30, 2026The American Medical Association, American Academy of Family Physicians, American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, American College of Physicians and American College of Surgeons said in a joint statement Sept. 30 that "statements suggesting AI is inherently better informed than physicians, or that physicians cannot be trusted to make clinical decisions without first consulting this technology, diminish physician expertise and risk undermining patients' trust." The statement names no one. Medical Economics reported that it followed remarks by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the Make America Healthy Again Summit, where he said AI can give "a second opinion that is much better informed than any doctor in the country" and said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had told him it would be malpractice for doctors to diagnose or prescribe without checking AI. Bloomberg reported that Kennedy also said AI may "correct" experts on measures such as vaccines and masks, and that Americans should be able to view their medical records on their phones and use AI to understand them. "Pitting physicians against technology or suggesting AI should replace physician expertise does not advance this important work," the groups said.
- Regulation Sept 30, 2026The Federal Trade Commission is investigating OpenAI, Anthropic and other artificial intelligence companies over possible consumer harms from their products, an agency spokesperson confirmed Sept. 30, according to ABC News, which reported that the inquiry concerns possible unfair or deceptive practices and that the agency could issue formal demands for company information. The FTC declined to name the other companies, Becker's Hospital Review reported, and has published no document on the inquiry. Becker's noted that Epic is patching security flaws, found in testing with Anthropic's Claude, that could have allowed unauthorized access to patient records. OpenAI sells ChatGPT for Healthcare to hospitals and health systems and extended three more tools to those customers on Sept. 29, Becker's reported.
- Regulation Sept 30, 2026The Pennsylvania House voted 144-59 on Sept. 30 for House Bill 1925, which would require hospitals, physician offices and clinics that use AI in clinical decision-making to tell patients in plain language and on their websites, and to label AI-generated patient messages about clinical matters with a disclaimer and a way to reach a human provider. Under the amended text, an insurer or Medicaid or CHIP managed care plan that uses AI in utilization review would need a health care provider to review the patient's clinical records and "exercise judgment independent of any recommendations" from AI before denying, reducing or terminating benefits, and facilities and insurers would file annual AI compliance statements with the state. Penalties reach $10,000 per knowing violation, capped at $100,000 a year per entity, and the act would take effect a year after enactment. "We must ensure that all final decisions are made by a human doctor," said Rep. Joe Hogan, R-Bucks, one of five prime sponsors with Rep. Arvind Venkat, D-Allegheny, a physician, according to the House Democratic caucus. The bill goes to the Senate.
- Regulation Oct 1, 2026Alabama's SB 63 took effect Oct. 1. It requires that any health plan decision to deny, delay or modify a prior authorization request based on medical necessity "shall always be made by a licensed physician or other health care professional," and requires a plan that uses AI for those determinations to base them on the enrollee's medical history and the clinical circumstances the requesting provider presents. Plans must disclose their AI use in utilization review policies and certify to the state Department of Insurance each year that the AI does not rely on a group dataset and does not discriminate. The bill passed the Senate 33-0 and the House 102-0, according to LegiScan. It places no duty on treating physicians.
- Deployment Oct 1, 2026AdventHealth, the health system based in Altamonte Springs, Florida, began making OpenEvidence's clinical evidence search available Oct. 1 to physicians, nurses, pharmacists, care managers, therapists and other clinical staff within its electronic health record workflows, Becker's Hospital Review reported from a release by the two companies. The report gave no count of users or facilities and no results. "OpenEvidence gives our care teams a practical way to access current clinical evidence," said Dr. Michael Cacciatore, AdventHealth's chief clinical officer. The health system said the tool supports clinician judgment and does not replace it.Source: Becker's Hospital Review
- Deployment Oct 1, 2026UC San Diego Health, Harvard Medical School and Anthropic are building an open-source system to check the safety of medical recommendations made by patient-facing AI tools after they go live, Becker's Hospital Review reported Oct. 1. It applies a "clinical constitution," a set of community-developed rules based on medical evidence and clinical guidelines, and is part of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health's ADVOCATE program on AI-supported heart failure care, in which Kaiser Permanente and Duke University lead real-world implementation. "In the long run, simply evaluating an AI tool before it goes live is not going to be enough," said Dr. Karandeep Singh, UC San Diego Health's chief health AI officer, who said the monitor would flag only true safety risks to patients. Stanford leads a separate ADVOCATE monitoring project with OpenAI, under an award of up to $14.9 million.
- Regulation Sept 30, 2026The Department of Health and Human Services and ARPA-H announced four programs Sept. 30 to modernize clinical trials. The lead program, SURPASS, seeks a phaseless trial design built on digital twins, a continuous inference engine that analyzes data as it accumulates and an agentic layer that automates trial operations, BioSpace reported; STACK covers AI-accelerated site activation, COMMONS a national consent architecture for data across trials and CINCH patients' real-world data. HHS gave no funding amounts or timelines, and STAT reported that SURPASS is a five-year program that will take submissions later this fall. "Today's clinical trial system often requires too many stops, too much duplicated infrastructure, and too much time before researchers can understand whether a trial is on the right track," said Daria Fedyukina, the SURPASS program manager.