About the public’s health
Some states say Pfizer vaccine allotments cut for next week: “In recent days, governors and health leaders in more than a dozen states have said the federal government has told them that next week’s shipment of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will be less than originally projected.
[For example,] California, where an explosion in cases is straining intensive care units to the breaking point, will receive 160,000 fewer vaccine doses than state officials had anticipated next week — a roughly 40% reduction.”
Federal guidance enables employers to mandate workers get COVID-19 vaccine: “New guidance from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission allows employers to require workers to get COVID-19 vaccinations, which has major implications for providers…
The guidance applies to all employers and details what procedures a company can take if a person has a health reason why they can’t get the vaccine or has closely held religious objections.
If a worker can’t get the vaccine due to a disability, then employers should conduct an individual assessment on whether the worker poses a direct threat to the health and safety of others in the workplace.”
Increase in Fatal Drug Overdoses Across the United States Driven by Synthetic Opioids Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic: This CDC report is a reminder that the opioid crisis is still with us and getting worse.
About health insurance
CMS to allow managed care organizations to participate in direct contracting: “The model, announced Thursday by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), will allow Medicaid managed care organizations (MCOs) to participate in the global and professional options in the agency’s direct contracting model, which offers voluntary risk-sharing agreements with providers.”
The Coming Crisis For The Medicare Trust Fund: “The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) now projects that the trust fund will be exhausted in 2024, a little more than three years from now, which is the nearest the fund has come to exhaustion in the 55 years of its existence.”
About pharma
REGN-COV2, a Neutralizing Antibody Cocktail, in Outpatients with Covid-19: “In this ongoing, double-blind, phase 1–3 trial involving nonhospitalized patients with Covid-19, we investigated two fully human, neutralizing monoclonal antibod- ies against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) spike protein, used in a combined cocktail (REGN-COV2) to reduce the risk of the emer- gence of treatment-resistant mutant virus…
In this interim analysis, the REGN-COV2 antibody cocktail reduced viral load, with a greater effect in patients whose immune response had not yet been initi- ated or who had a high viral load at baseline. Safety outcomes were similar in the combined REGN-COV2 dose groups and the placebo group. (Funded by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and the Biomedical and Advanced Research and Development Authority of the Department of Health and Human Services…)”
About hospitals and healthcare systems
Tenet to Sell Urgent Care Platform to FastMed: “Tenet Healthcare… and FastMed Urgent Care announced today that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which FastMed will purchase Tenet’s urgent care platform [all 87 facilities], which is operated under the CareSpot and MedPost brands and managed by Tenet’s United Surgical Partners International (USPI) subsidiary.” The divestiture is unusual as hospitals/systems have been expanding their urgent care outpatient facilities.
About healthcare IT
Philips puts down $2.8B for BioTelemetry and its wearable heart monitors: “BioTelemetry, alongside its artificial intelligence-based analytics and other services, helps remotely monitor and diagnose at least 1 million cardiac patients each year. It’s a business that brought in $439 million in sales in 2019, and one that Philips expects to grow by more than 20% in the next four years—especially as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to push patients away from clinics and hospitals and toward telehealth solutions.”