About the public’s health
Characteristics of Americans With Primary Care and Changes Over Time, 2002-2015: “From 2002 through 2015, a decreasing proportion of Americans had an identified source of primary care, especially Americans who were younger, less medically complex, of minority background, or living in the South…” The reasons are detailed and can be addressed by proper structural reforms.
FDA clears Boston Scientific's disposable duodenoscope, the world's first: “The FDA has cleared its first fully disposable duodenoscope, following years of reports of infections being transmitted between patients by the notoriously difficult-to-clean devices…” The cost has not been released.
The Next Vaping:Big Tobacco claims to have created a safer cigarette. Is unleashing it a big mistake?: A store in a retail mall in Atlanta is the first to offer a Philip Morris International product that is an electrified cylinder that can be kept in your pocket. The “IQOS” device is “the first in what’s expected to be a new class known as ‘heated tobacco’ or ‘heat not burn’ products. They’re not vaping or smoking, but another way of inhaling the addictive stimulant nicotine.” The product is available only to those over 21 who claim to be smokers. What as-yet unknown side effects will this version of nicotine delivery system cause?
Georgia Is Funneling Millions of Dollars to Fake Abortion Clinics: In 2017, the Georgia law “Positive Alternatives for Pregnancy and Parenting Grant Program” went into effect to fund “crisis pregnancy centers. (CPCs).” By June 2020, these centers will have received at least $6.7 million in funding. Vice reports that the CPCs “are nonprofits that are typically religiously affiliated and claim to provide free, legitimate medical services but actually use deceptive language on their websites and in their advertisements to get pregnant people considering abortion to walk through their doors. Once there, staff members and volunteers who typically lack medical training give the client faith-based misinformation about abortion, dissuade them from terminating their pregnancy, or tell them they have more time to think about it.”
About health insurance
Out-Of-Network Billing And Negotiated Payments For Hospital-Based Physicians (Health Affairs, full article access requires subscription): “Using data for 2015 from a large commercial insurer, we found that at in-network hospitals, 11.8 percent of anesthesiology care, 12.3 percent of care involving a pathologist, 5.6 percent of claims for radiologists, and 11.3 percent of cases involving an assistant surgeon were billed out of network. The ability to bill out of network allows these specialists to negotiate artificially high in-network rates. Out-of-network billing is more prevalent at hospitals in concentrated hospital and insurance markets and at for-profit hospitals. Our estimates show that if these specialists were not able to bill out of network, it would lower physician payments for privately insured patients by 13.4 percent and reduce health care spending for people with employer-sponsored insurance by 3.4 percent (approximately $40 billion annually).” Unfortunately Congress is unlikely to act soon on this fixable, serious problem.
About healthcare IT
Cigna to expand AI-enabled medication management solution: “An artificial intelligence system that tracks chronic disease treatment will soon be available to all Cigna and Express Scripts employer clients…
Health Connect 360 relies on medical, pharmacy, lab and biometric data and analytics tools from both Cigna and Express Scripts to track patients' medication adherence, trigger alerts regarding health data and missed medications, and offer personalized recommendations to address any gaps in care. This information can also be automatically fed into EHR systems.”
Krounda Medical fined $85K for failing to give patient access to EHR data: The fines levied by the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) are usually for unauthorized data leaks. This instance shows the breadth of possible penalties. In only the second case of its kind, the OCR found that Korunda medical group failed to provide requested medical records to a third party, and “also failed to provide them in the requested electronic format and charged more than the reasonably cost-based fees allowed under HIPAA…”
Prevalence and Factors Associated with Family Physicians Providing E-Visits: “Fewer than 10% of family physicians provided e-visits. Physicians in HMO and VA settings (ie, capitated vs noncapitated models) were more likely to provide e-visits, which suggests that reimbursement may be a major barrier.”