About hospitals and health systems
U.S. appeals court upholds Trump health care price disclosure rule: “The 2-0 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is a victory for President Donald Trump’s effort to make health care pricing more transparent so patients can be better informed when deciding on treatment.
The American Hospital Association and other hospital groups had challenged the rule, which was issued in November 2019 and is scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1, 2021.”
New Jersey may be the first state to impose per-bed fees on nonprofit hospitals for municipal services: “New Jersey lawmakers approved an unusual measure last week that requires many nonprofit hospitals to pay per-bed fees to their local governments, while preserving their increasingly contested property-tax exemptions.
The legislation, which requires hospitals to pay a fee of $3 a day for each licensed bed, is in response to a landmark 2015 New Jersey Tax Court ruling involving Morristown Medical Center that “the operation and function of nonprofit hospitals do not meet the criteria for property tax exemption” under state law. A 300-bed hospital subject to the fee would pay $328,500 a year.”
About the public’s health
Coronavirus updates: Vaccinations lag as hospitalizations hit record levels: “Although officials projected that the United States would be able to vaccinate 20 million people by the end of December, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 11.4 million doses had been sent to states and only about 2.1 million people had received the vaccine’s first dose.”
You’re Infected With the Coronavirus. But How Infected?: “Dozens of research papers published over the past few months found that people whose bodies were teeming with the coronavirus more often became seriously ill and more likely to die, compared with those who carried much less virus and were more likely to emerge relatively unscathed… data on viral load — or at least a rough approximation of it — is readily available, built into results from the P.C.R. tests that most labs use to diagnose a coronavirus infection.”
1st reported US case of COVID-19 variant found in Colorado: “The first reported U.S. case of the COVID-19 variant that’s been seen in the United Kingdom has been discovered in Colorado, Gov. Jared Polis announced Tuesday, adding urgency to efforts to vaccinate Americans.
The variant was found in a man in his 20s who is in isolation southeast of Denver in Elbert County and has no travel history, state health officials said.”
New US dietary guidelines include babies and toddlers for first time: “The United States Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services issued new dietary guidelines, which include recommendations for babies and toddlers for the first time…
Despite this expanded guidance including early life stages, the guidance doesn't follow quantitative recommendations in two key areas -- alcohol and sugar intake -- addressed by an advisory committee's scientific report.”
More politics and lobbying win out at the expense of the public’s health.
Philips, BioIntelliSense and University of Colorado receive U.S. Department of Defense funding for early COVID-19 detection: “
Cambridge, MA – “Royal Philips… and BioIntelliSense, Inc., a continuous health monitoring and clinical intelligence company, today announced they have been selected by the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC) to receive nearly USD 2.8 million from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) through a Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium (MTEC) award to validate BioIntelliSense’s FDA-cleared BioSticker device for the early detection of COVID-19 symptoms. The goal of the award is to accelerate the use of wearable diagnostics for the benefit of military and public health through the early identification and containment of pre-symptomatic COVID-19 cases.
Working with the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, the clinical study will consist of 2,500 eligible participants with a recent, known COVID-19 exposure and/or a person experiencing early COVID-19 symptoms.”
Regional Variation in Active Surveillance for Low-Risk Prostate Cancer in the US: “In this cohort study of 79 825 men from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Prostate with Watchful Waiting database, variations across SEER regions appeared to explain 17% of the observed differences in use of active surveillance after adjustment for sociodemographic characteristics and county health resources. Other factors, such as Black race, county-level socioeconomic factors, and specialist densities did not show an association, although Hispanic ethnicity showed a negative association with surveillance use.”
Local area variations have been studied in this country for the past 50 years. Unfortunately they still persist. Health system characteristics, physician practice styles and patient treatment preferences have been shown to be the reasons for the variations.
About healthcare IT
VA's digital health project faces new scrutiny from union, groups inside agency: The saga continues…:
”The Department of Veterans Affairs' $16 billion medical records modernization project is facing new scrutiny just a month after a much-touted software rollout at a VA facility in Spokane, Wash.
One of the department’s unions says it didn't get advance warning the new system would be activated at a VA facility in Las Vegas. Meanwhile, groups within the department are questioning the technical capabilities of the project and who’s managing it. And internal reviews are raising concerns about some important, data-sharing technical capabilities, along with its management structure.”
About health insurance
CPT E/M Office Revisions Level of Medical Decision Making (MDM): A reminder that these coding changes start January 1. This chart from the AMA is really helpful in explaining the decision criteria,
2012-2018 Data on Physician Compensation Methods: Upswing in Compensation through the Combination of Salary and Bonus: An interesting survey of how physician compensation has changed over a few years. “The percentage of physicians who were paid by a single method dropped to 42.7% in 2018 from 51.8% in 2012, with salary and compensation based on productivity being the two most prominent payment methods.”
About pharma
Pfizer Forges Potential $4.2 Billion Deal to Distribute Myovant Sciences’ Orgovyx: “Pfizer is expanding further into oncology thanks to a deal with Myovant Sciences, under which the two companies will cooperate on developing and commercializing Myovant’s newly approved prostate cancer drug Orgovyx (relugolix). Myovant will receive up to $4.2 billion, including an upfront payment of $650 million.”
This drug was previously mentioned in this blog as a once-daily oral treatment for advanced prostate cancer.