U.S. Representatives Terri Sewell of Alabama and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania have introduced the Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act of 2025, a bipartisan effort aimed at tackling the nation's doctor shortage by expanding Medicare-supported medical residency positions by 14,000 over the next seven years.
The AMA plans to ask a U.S. Senate committee to investigate HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s decision to overhaul a key vaccine advisory group, the medical association said in an emergency resolution passed Tuesday. The House of Delegates of the AMA adopted the emergency resolution at its annual meeting in Chicago. The adoption came just one day after Kennedy announced that he had removed all 17 members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices.
A study of pediatric outpatient prescriptions over a 10-year period found that flu and respiratory syncytial virus are associated with meaningful proportions of pediatric antibiotic prescribing, researchers reported in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.
Kentucky announced two pertussis deaths in infants over the past six months, and neither the infants nor their mothers had been vaccinated against the highly contagious bacterial infection also known as whooping cough. According to the Kentucky Department for Public Health, these are the first whooping cough deaths in the state since 2018.
Terminally ill New Yorkers would have the legal ability to end their own lives with pharmaceutical drugs under a bill passed Monday in the state Legislature. The proposal, which now moves to the governor's office, would allow a person with an incurable illness to be prescribed life-ending drugs if he or she requests the medication and gets approval from two physicians. A spokesperson for New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she would review the legislation. The New York Senate gave final approval to the bill Monday night after hours of debate during which supporters said it would let terminally ill people die on their own terms.
Hiring alone won't fix workforce shortages in healthcare. Leaders in skilled nursing, health systems and senior living are scrambling to fill shifts while balancing staff preferences, operational budgets and quality of care. A significant opportunity is in offloading the work that's pulling healthcare staff away from patients and residents, and that's where AI agents are starting to make a real impact.