Lawmakers in New York are preparing for the once-a-decade redistricting process that could alter the political landscape in the state and change how voters and regions are represented in the halls of power in Albany and Washington.

Later today, the first of eight regional hearings will be held on the redistricting process, with the commission charged with drawing political boundaries for the House of Representatives and the state Legislature meeting on Long Island. 

And both state and federal lawmakers want their constituents to be engaged with these meeting amid a new process following a constitutional amendment in 2014 that turned much of the work over to an independent commission appointed by the state Legislature. 

Lawmakers in recent days have sought to rally voters to participate in the process and the public hearings. 

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A more than $1.1 billion settlement, the largest ever negotiated by New York State Attorney General Letitia James, has been reached in the ongoing legal battle against opioid manufacturers, distributors and consultants.

A.G. James’ office announced the agreement on Tuesday with McKesson Corporation, Cardinal Health Inc., and Amerisource Bergen Drug Corporation, all drug distributors.

As part of Tuesday's agreement, McKesson, Cardinal Health, and Amerisource Bergen will pay New York a total of nearly $1.2 billion, of which more than $1 billion will go towards abatement.

Payments will start in just two months and will continue over the next 17 years.

Mass vaccination sites in four locations in New York state will close Monday, July 26, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said, as the spate of people seeking to be vaccinated for COVID-19 has slowed in recent weeks.

Vaccination sites at Binghamton University at Gannett Drive, Aviation Mall in Queensbury, Stony Brook Southampton, and the Diana Center at SUNY Orange will cease operations, Cuomo's office said, part of a broader "downscaling" of vaccination efforts to focus on more localized areas.

Highlights and News from the 2021 ACS Quality and Safety Conference VIRTUAL – Free Registration is Still Open!

New in JACS: Examining Guidelines to Promote Effective Opioid Use after Inpatient Surgery

Supporting Surgeon Well-Being through Free Peer Support

The 2021 ACS TQIP Conference Will be a Virtual Event

Read the July Bulletin: The ACS Your Breast Cancer Surgery Patient Education Program Launches

This article addresses frequently asked questions about PACs, including the origin and purpose of PAC categories, and describes the ACSPA-SurgeonsPAC governance and disbursements. > Read More

Did you know?
The New York Chapter manages its own PAC at the state level.  The Surgeon PAC supports campaigns of policymakers who understand the current and long-term challenges that surgeons face when practicing in New York. 

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Patricia L. Turner, MD, MBA, FACS, has been named the next Executive Director of the American College of Surgeons (ACS). Dr. Turner will begin her new role as Executive Director-Elect October 1, 2021, and she will formally assume the role of Executive Director January 1, 2022. She succeeds David B. Hoyt, MD, FACS, who has served as Executive Director since 2010.

Congratulations Dr. Turner! We look forward to building a strong membership in New York.

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The Clinical Congress Preliminary Program offers an overview of panel sessions, Postgraduate Courses, Named Lectures, Meet-the-Expert Luncheons, and other information related to the Clinical Congress, which takes place virtually October 23–27, 2021.

The New York Chapter is planning to organize an event and get together during the conference! Let us know if you'd like more information.

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced that New York will end the state disaster emergency declared on March 7, 2020 to fight COVID-19. Given New York's dramatic progress against COVID-19, with the vaccination rates, and declining hospitalization and positivity statewide the state of emergency will expire after Thursday, June 24.

Federal CDC guidance will remain in effect, which includes masks for unvaccinated individuals, as well as all riders on public transit and in certain settings, such as health care, nursing homes, correctional facilities, and homeless shelters.

We will keep you abreast of any guidance coming out of the New York State Department of Health.

To see the governor’s complete release visit: https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-cuomo-announces-new-york-ending-covid-19-state-disaster-emergency-june-24

On Tuesday, after 472 days, New York hit a vaccination milestone—70 percent of adult New Yorkers have received at least one dose of the COVID vaccine.

After reaching this goal, the state lifted most of the remaining COVID restrictions.

This means no more restrictions across commercial settings, including retail, food services, offices, gyms, entertainment, hair salons, barber shops, etc.—as well as no more social gathering limits.

Existing COVID health protocols are still in place for some settings such as public transportation, health facilities, and indoor Pre-K-12 schools. 

Richard E. Anderson, MD, FACP, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, The Doctors Company and TDC Group

Artificial intelligence (AI) has proven of value in the COVID-19 pandemic and shows promise for mitigating future healthcare crises. During the pandemic’s first wave in New York, for example, Mount Sinai Health System used an algorithm to help identify patients ready for discharge.

Pandemic applications have demonstrated AI’s potential not only to lift administrative burdens, but also to give physicians back what Eric Topol, MD, founder and director of Scripps Research Translational Institute and author of Deep Medicine, calls “the gift of time.”[1]

Like any emerging technology, AI brings risk, but its promise of benefit should outweigh the probability of negative consequences—provided we remain aware of and mitigate the potential for AI-induced adverse events.

AI’s Pandemic Success Limited Due to Fragmented Data

Innovation is the key to success in any crisis, and many healthcare providers have shown their ability to innovate with AI during the pandemic. For example, AI has been used to distinguish COVID-19-specific symptoms: It was a computer sifting medical records that took anosmia, loss of the sense of smell, from an anecdotal connection to an officially recognized early symptom of the virus.[2] This information now helps physicians distinguish COVID-19 from influenza.

However, holding back more innovation is the fragmentation of healthcare data in the U.S. Most AI applications for medicine rely on machine learning; that is, they train on historical patient data to recognize patterns. Therefore, “Everything that we’re doing gets better with a lot more annotated datasets,” Dr. Topol says. Unfortunately, due to our disparate systems, we don’t have centralized data.[3] And even if our data were centralized, researchers lack enough reliable COVID-19 data to perfect algorithms in the short term.

AI Introduces New Questions around Liability

While AI may eventually be assigned legal personhood, it is not, in fact, a person: It is a tool wielded by individual clinicians, by teams, by health systems, even multiple systems collaborating. Our current liability laws are not ready for the era of digital medicine.

AI algorithms are not perfect. Because we know that diagnostic error is already a major allegation in malpractice claims, we must ask: What happens when a patient alleges that diagnostic error occurred because a physician or physicians leaned too heavily on AI?

AI in Healthcare Can Help Mitigate Bias—or Worsen It

Machine learning is only as good as the information provided to train the machine. Models trained on partial datasets can skew toward demographics that turned up more often in the data. Already during the pandemic’s first waves, multiple AI systems used to classify x-rays have been found to show racial, gender, and socioeconomic biases.

It’s critical that system builders are able to explain and qualify their training data and that those who best understand AI-related system risks are the ones who influence healthcare systems or alter applications to mitigate AI-related harms.

AI Can Help Spot the Next Outbreak

More than a week before the World Health Organization (WHO) released its first warning about a novel coronavirus, the AI platform BlueDot, created in Toronto, Canada, spotted an unusual cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, China. Meanwhile, at Boston Children’s Hospital, the AI application Healthmap was scanning social media and news sites for signs of disease cluster, and it, too, flagged the first signs of what would become the COVID-19 outbreak—days before the WHO’s first formal alert.

These innovative applications of AI in healthcare demonstrate real promise in detecting future outbreaks of new viruses early. This will allow healthcare providers and public health officials get information out sooner, reducing the load on health systems, and ultimately, saving lives.

[1] Topol E. Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again. New York, NY: Hachette Book Group; 2019:285.

[2] Cha, AE. Artificial intelligence and covid-19: Can the machines save us? Washington Post. Published November 1, 2020. Accessed November 9, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/covid-19-artificial-intelligence/2020/10/30/7486db84-1485-11eb-bc10-40b25382f1be_story.html

[3] Reuter E. Hundreds of AI solutions proposed for pandemic, but few are proven. MedCity News. Published May 28, 2020. Accessed October 19, 2020. https://medcitynews.com/2020/05/hundreds-of-ai-solutions-proposed-for-pandemic-but-few-are-proven/