Commentary|Articles|September 18, 2026

AJMC® in the Press, September 18, 2026

Author(s)Habiba Atta
Fact checked by: Laura Joszt, MA
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Coverage of our peer-reviewed research and news reporting in the health care and mainstream press.

The study “Plan Switching Among Medicare Advantage Enrollees Dually Eligible for Medicaid,” published in the September issue of The American Journal of Managed Care® (AJMC®), found that voluntary switching between Medicare Advantage plans increased substantially from 2016 to 2022, rising from 12.49% to 22.49% among fully dually eligible enrollees, from 17.36% to 30.11% among partially dually eligible enrollees, and from 9.92% to 13.39% among non-dually eligible enrollees, while switching back to Traditional Medicare remained low across all groups.

Becker's Payer Issues covered the AJMC study’s findings as it reported on the rise in Medicare Advantage plan switching among dually eligible beneficiaries, condensing the study’s data into a list of 6 key takeaways covering the switching-rate increases, the limited movement to Traditional Medicare, and the demographic patterns by age, risk score, and race/ethnicity.

The study “Ambient AI Tool Adoption in US Hospitals and Associated Factors,” published in the January issue of AJMC, found that among 2784 US hospitals using Epic electronic health record systems, 62.6% had adopted an ambient artificial intelligence (AI) documentation tool by June 2025, with adoption significantly higher among nonprofit hospitals (70.2%) than for-profit hospitals (28.8%) and among hospitals with stronger operating margins (67.6% in the top quartile vs 58.0% in the bottom quartile).

Medical Economics, a sister site of AJMC, used the findings to illustrate how widely ambient AI documentation tools have already spread into clinical practice, citing its adoption rate and the disparity between nonprofit and for-profit hospitals as evidence that the AI rollout is tilted toward better-resourced systems, widening the gap between hospitals that can pay for the tools and those that cannot.

The article “Federal Judge Puts Brakes on RFK Jr's Vaccine Agenda,” published on AJMC.com in March, reported that US District Judge Brian Murphy sided with the American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical organizations, blocking HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s 13 appointees to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and invalidating votes that had downgraded hepatitis B and COVID-19 vaccine recommendations, while noting the judge declined at that time to block Kennedy’s separate May 2025 directive narrowing COVID-19 vaccine guidance for healthy children and pregnant women.

Medical Daily cited AJMC’s reporting specifically to clarify a factual dispute over the scope of the March ruling: while plaintiff groups claimed the ruling had overturned Kennedy’s COVID-19 vaccine directive for healthy children and pregnant women, Medical Daily noted that “the American Journal of Managed Care reported that the judge declined, at that time, to block it,” using AJMC as the source to correct or temper that claim in its update on the case’s pause pending an October 6 appeals court hearing.


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