About the pubic’s health
COVID-19 Guidance for Hospital Reporting and FAQs: For Hospitals, Hospital Laboratory, and Acute Care Facility Data Reporting Updated July 10, 2020: This HHS guidance specifies what facilities need to report with respect to COVID-19 treatment, e.g., demographics of treated patients and personnel shortages. What is changed is where the reporting can go: The state; HHS at https://teletracking.protect.hhs.gov; health IT vendor or other third-party which will share information directly with HHS; and the hospital or facility’s website in a standardized format, such as schema.org.
However, facilities may no longer send the data to the CDC. “As of July 15,, 2020, hospitals should no longer report the Covid-19 information in this document to the National Healthcare Safety Network site.” According to its website: “CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network is the nation’s most widely used healthcare-associated infection tracking system. NHSN provides facilities, states, regions, and the nation with data needed to identify problem areas, measure progress of prevention efforts, and ultimately eliminate healthcare-associated infections.
In addition, NHSN allows healthcare facilities to track blood safety errors and important healthcare process measures such as healthcare personnel influenza vaccine status and infection control adherence rates.”
I would have loved to see the politics behind this change.
CDC's 'best estimate' is 40 percent COVID-19 infections are asymptomatic:”A person with COVID-19 is still 'likely to infect' 2.5 other people…The government agency added a new part to its report, an ‘Infection Fatality Ratio,’ which ‘takes into account both symptomatic and asymptomatic cases and may therefore be a more directly measurable parameter for disease severity for COVID-19.’ The new metric states that 0.65 percent of those with COVID-19 are estimated to die.”
About pharma
Boehringer Ingelheim-backed COVID-19 researchers identify new antibodies to fight the virus: Researchers discovered in pre-pandemic blood samples “precursors of potent SARS-CoV-2-neutralizing antibodies in every single individual,” … suggesting that the immune systems of healthy people may already be primed to ramp up the production of COVID-19 neutralizing antibodies in response to treatment with the drug candidates they identified.” Good news for vaccine development.
New chemical could potentially lead to a cure for neglected tropical diseases: “Scientists say they are a step closer to developing a drug to kill the trypanosome parasite that causes human African trypanosomiasis, otherwise known as sleeping sickness, paving the way for a potential cure.
The University of York researchers deciphered the mechanism by which the compound, known as AB1 works. AB1 was identified by researchers at the Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases and similar compounds have been developed as an anti-cancer drug by the company.
The researchers found that AB1 blocks the division of the parasite by interfering with the function of an essential enzyme in a structure called the kinetochore. The way in which the compound kills the parasite is different from the way it kills cancer cells, such that the breakthrough could potentially lead to a cure being found for the neglected tropical disease and others including Chagas disease.”
The top 15 pharma companies by 2026 sales: According to these projections, Roche will be #1.
About health insurance
Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment Systems for Acute Care Hospitals and the Long-Term Care Hospital Prospective Payment System and Proposed Policy Changes and Fiscal Year 2021 Rates: The American Hospitals Association is challenging a proposed change in calculation of Medicare DRG payments. Currently those payments are calculated from treatment of Medicare patients. CMS wants to include private payers as well. In this letter to CMS, the Association explains the issue:
“Market-based” MS-DRG Data Collection and Weight Calculation
CMS proposes to require hospitals to include on their Medicare cost report what the agency calls ‘market-based payment rate information.’Specifically, hospitals would be required to report, by Medicare-severity diagnosis-related group (MS-DRG), the median payer-specific negotiated charge for Medicare Advantage (MA) organizations and the median payer-specific negotiated charge for all of the hospital’s third-party payers. The agency also is considering incorporating this information in the inpatient PPS MS-DRG relative weights beginning in FY 2024. We believe both proposals are unlawful and urge CMS not to finalize them [emphasis in the original]. CMS does not cite authority on which to base the payer-specific data collection requirement or the MS-DRG weight recalculation. In addition, the rule on which CMS relies remains under legal challenge.”
NJ Hospitals Say Insurance Companies Have Denied More than 1,000 Claims for COVID-19 Care:”Thirty acute care facilities reported more than 1,000 claims related to coronavirus patients were denied by various health insurance companies between March and the end of June, according to the New Jersey Hospital Association. In half the cases, the company questioned the medical necessity of the treatment…
One hospital alone also reported nearly 1,500 denials related to testing services, regardless of the requirements these services be covered, the association said. More than half of these denials involved an invalid payment code, the hospital told the association, and others were connected to patients who tested negative for COVID-19.” If it is happening in NJ it is happening elsewhere.
About health facilities
Amazon Makes Health Care Access Even Easier for Employees with Launch of New Third-Party Health Centers:”The launch of the new Neighborhood Health Centers will provide a range of quality primary care services exclusively for Amazon employees – further strengthening Amazon’s industry-leading benefits program, which provides comprehensive healthcare for employees starting on day one of employment. Through this initial pilot program, Amazon expects to establish 20 health centers in five cities across the U.S., improving access and care for more than 115,000 associates and their families.” Services will be provided by Crossover Health.
About healthcare IT
Telehealth Guidance for Electronic Clinical Quality Measures (eCQMs) for Eligible Professional/Eligible Clinician 2021 Quality Reporting: “Guidance provided within this document is intended to provide stakeholders with clarity on eCQM telehealth-eligible codes that appear within the eCQM specifications for the 2021 quality reporting performance period. This guidance is specific to the 2021 quality reporting performance period.” For a summary of the 39 measures see this website.