Becker's Hospital Review

91 FINANCE CMO / CARE DELIVERY Dartmouth accuses 17 medical students of online cheating By Morgan Haefner H anover, N.H.-based Dartmouth investi- gated several students at its Geisel School of Medicine for allegedly cheating while taking exams online, according to a May 7 report in the Valley News. Dartmouth alleged the students used their online coursework management system, Canvas, while taking closed-book exams remotely. Geisel Dean Duane Compton, PhD, told the Valley News that some students may need to retake exams or face more serious sanctions. "We take academic integrity very seriously," Dr. Compton told e New York Times in a report published May 9. "We wouldn't want people to be able to be eligible for a medical license without really having the appropriate training." According to the Times, which also spoke with some of the 17 students who were accused of cheating, the allegations have led to protests on campus, arguments of unfair treatment from the student government and letters of concern to administrators from more than two dozen faculty members. Independent technology experts and a review of documents obtained by the Times shows Dart- mouth's reliance on online activity data to find cheating may have led to erroneous accusations, according to the report. Some schools, like the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, have said they will no longer use online ex- am-monitoring technology. In an email students made public and cited by the Times, Dartmouth administrators said in one case, "automated Canvas processes are likely to have created the data that was seen rather than deliberate activity by the user." Cases for seven of the students were dismissed. Ten other students were expelled, suspended or received marks on their records, according to the Times. Nine students pleaded guilty, according to the report, and some filed appeals. n NYC Health + Hospitals stops using 2 race-based clinical assessments By Mackenzie Bean N YC Health + Hospitals will no longer perform two common diagnostic tests that use race-based calculations, the New York City-based health sys- tem said May 17. The health system will stop adjust- ing for race in a formula commonly used to measure kidney function. Instead, NYC Health + Hospitals will calculate the measure — known as glomerular filtration rate — based solely on a patient's creatine lev- els, age and sex. The health system will also stop us- ing a clinical risk calculation for vag- inal birth after cesarean section. The calculation was created in 2007 and includes race as a risk factor along- side age, body mass index and clin- ical history of delivery. The changes are part of the system's new "medical eracism" initiative, which aims to eliminate race-based assessments used for medical de- cisions that are based on biased assumptions and could hinder care quality for patients of color. "Race is not a biological determi- nant, but a social construct," NYC Health + Hospitals CMO Machelle Allen, MD, said in a news release. "These calculations were based on racialized assumptions about biol- ogy that date back to slavery and the belief that somehow the bod- ies of African descendants were different from others." Quality, safety and equity leaders at the health system are leading the initiative and will work to identify additional race-based assessments to recommend for elimination. n CDC narrows monitoring of breakthrough COVID-19 cases By Mackenzie Bean T he CDC changed how it tracks breakthrough COVID-19 cases among fully vaccinated Americans in May, spurring concerns from scientists about the potential for inadequate data, Bloomberg reported May 9. The agency switched from monitoring all reported breakthrough cases to only ones that result in hospitalization or death as of May 1, Tom Clark, MD, head of the vaccine evaluation unit for the CDC's vaccine task force, told Bloomberg. The CDC's goal is to improve the quality of data collected for severe cases that have the greatest clinical and public health importance. Some scientists have said the change may mean missing out on data need- ed to understand why and how breakthrough cases happen. "We shouldn't be narrowing the focus, we should be broadening and de- velop a systematic plan," Eric Topol, MD, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, Calif., told Bloomberg. The CDC opted to change its strategy after finding few concerning patterns in the current data, Dr. Clark said. He added that the agency is also planning future vaccine research to compare disease severity and the frequency of variant infections among vaccinated and unvaccinated participants. As of May 24, there had been 2,454 reports of breakthrough cases involving hospitalization or death among more than 130 million Americans vaccinated, according to the CDC. n

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