About health insurance
Haven, the Amazon-Berkshire-JPMorgan venture to disrupt healthcare, is disbanding after 3 years: “Haven, the joint venture formed by three of America’s most powerful companies to lower costs and improve outcomes in health care, is disbanding after three years, CNBC has learned exclusively.
The company began informing employees Monday that it will shut down by the end of next month, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter…
One key issue facing Haven was that while the firm came up with ideas, each of the three founding companies executed their own projects separately with their own employees, obviating the need for the joint venture to begin with, according to the people, who declined to be identified speaking about the matter.”
About hospitals and health systems
Hospitals Say They Will Publish Previously Secret Prices: Just a reminder: “As of Jan. 1, hospitals will be required to publish the prices negotiated privately with each payer for 300 common services for easy use by consumers, and make public the same information for all their procedures in a format that can be read and analyzed by computers.” Check hospital websites to see if they comply. For example, Partners in Boston has listed prices for a couple years; but their pdf. is dated 2018.
About the public’s health
A new mandate highlights costs, benefits of making all scientific articles free to read: “In 2018, a group of mostly European funders sent shock waves through the world of scientific publishing by proposing an unprecedented rule: The scientists they funded would be required to make journal articles developed with their support immediately free to read when published.
The new requirement, which takes effect starting this month, seeks to upend decades of tradition in scientific publishing, whereby scientists publish their research in journals for free and publishers make money by charging universities and other institutions for subscriptions. Advocates of the new scheme, called Plan S (the “S” stands for the intended “shock” to the status quo), hope to destroy subscription paywalls and speed scientific progress by allowing findings to be shared more freely. It’s part of a larger shift in scientific communication that began more than 20 years ago and has recently picked up steam.
Scientists have several ways to comply with Plan S, including by paying publishers a fee to make an article freely available on a journal website, or depositing the article in a free public repository where anyone can download it. The mandate is the first by an international coalition of funders, which now includes 17 agencies and six foundations, including the Wellcome Trust and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, two of the world’s largest funders of biomedical research.”
Read this article from Science for more information. It is truly a revolutionary move.
U.S. distributes over 13.07 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines; 4.2 million administered -CDC: “The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it had administered 4,225,756 first doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the country as of Saturday morning and distributed 13,071,925 doses.”
Coronavirus: BMJ urges NYT to correct vaccine 'mixing' article: “The editor of the British Medical Journal has asked the New York Times to correct an article that says UK guidelines allow two Covid-19 vaccines to be mixed.[Bold in original]
The US publication reported that UK health officials would allow patients to be given a second dose that is a different vaccine to their first…
Dr Mary Ramsay, Public Health England's head of immunisations, said: ‘We do not recommend mixing the Covid-19 vaccines - if your first dose is the Pfizer vaccine you should not be given the AstraZeneca vaccine for your second dose and vice versa.’”
Vaping combined with smoking is likely as harmful as smoking cigarettes alone:
“Participants who vaped exclusively showed a similar inflammatory and oxidative stress profile as people who did not smoke cigarettes or use e-cigarettes.
Participants who smoked exclusively and those who used cigarettes and e-cigarettes had higher levels across all biomarkers assessed compared to participants who did not use cigarettes or e-cigarettes.
Compared to participants who smoked exclusively, those who vaped exclusively had significantly lower levels of almost all inflammatory and oxidative stress biomarkers. However, participants who used cigarettes and e-cigarettes had levels of all inflammatory and oxidative stress biomarkers comparable to those who smoked exclusively.”
CDC hopes to double the number of coronavirus samples checked for new mutations: “The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hopes to more than double the number of coronavirus genomes sequenced to watch for new mutations in the US over the next two weeks, a top official said Sunday.
The CDC is now sequencing about 3,000 samples a week and hopes to more than double that to about 6,500 per week, according to Dr. Gregory Armstrong, director of the Office of Advanced Molecular Detection at the CDC's National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases.”
Pfizer and BioNTech to offer COVID vaccine to volunteers who got placebo: “Pfizer Inc and its partner BioNTech Se plan to give volunteers who received a placebo in its COVID-19 vaccine trial an option to receive a first dose of the vaccine by March 1, 2021, while staying within the study.
The trial's Vaccine Transition Option allows all participants aged 16 or older the choice to discover whether they were given the placebo, ‘and for participants who learn they received the placebo, to have the option to receive the investigational vaccine while staying in the study,’ the companies said on their website here for trial participants.”
Feds may cut Moderna vaccine doses in half so more people get shots, Warp Speed adviser says: “The federal government is in talks with Moderna about giving half the recommended dose of the company's Covid-19 shot to speed up immunization efforts, the head of the Trump administration's vaccine rollout said on Sunday.
Operation Warp Speed chief adviser Moncef Slaoui said there is evidence that two half doses in people between the ages of 18 and 55 gives ‘identical immune response’ to the recommended one hundred microgram dose, but said the final decision will rest with the FDA.”
About healthcare IT
10 biggest patient data breaches in 2020: Wonder why patients don’t trust healthcare IT systems with their data? “In 2020, 527 healthcare organizations reported to HHS more than 21 million individuals being affected by data breaches.” Recall that smaller breaches need not be reported. And in a related article: Nearly 4M health records breached in December
Allscripts Closes Previously Announced Sale of CarePort Health Business: “On December 31, 2020, Allscripts… closed the previously announced sale of its CarePort Health business to WellSky® Corporation for $1.35 billion. CarePort solutions assist hundreds of hospitals and thousands of post-acute care providers to efficiently coordinate and transition patients through different settings of care.”
About pharma
Italy’s Angelini to buy Swiss biotech group for $1bn: “Italy’s Angelini Pharma has agreed to buy emerging Swiss biotech company Arvelle Therapeutics for up to $960m as it aims to become a leading European player in the treatment of central nervous system and mental diseases. Angelini will pay private-equity backed Arvelle an initial $610m in cash and another $350m following the European Medicines Agency’s approval of a drug for the treatment of epilepsy, which is expected this year, and certain revenue targets.”