About healthcare policy
Biden releases 2,700-item to-do list: 5 healthcare updates: “President Joe Biden released a nearly 2,700-item regulatory to-do list Dec. 10 that targets mental healthcare, the 340B drug discount program and other healthcare issues through his administration's rulemaking authority…” Read the article for a summary of the 5 healthcare areas.
About health insurance
Employers' health insurance costs surge in 2021 as elective procedures resume - survey: “The survey by benefits company Mercer of firms that employ about 118 million people showed the average cost of employer-sponsored health insurance per employee jumped 6.3% this year to $14,542 - the largest rise since 2010.
The increase was just 3.4% in 2020 when the pandemic had strained hospital capacity and forced people to put off elective procedures.
‘I think that’s (catch-up care) certainly part of the cost driver,’ Kate Brown, Mercer’s Center for Health Innovation Leader, told Reuters.
Brown said several other factors, including claims related to the treatment of long-term effects of COVID-19 and specialty drug pricing, could also be driving the cost rise and may continue into 2022.”
Medicare urged to flex its power and slash back premium hike: Senate Finance Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., “says the Biden administration should use its legal authority to cut back a hefty premium increase soon hitting millions of enrollees, as a growing number of Democratic lawmakers call for action amid worries over rising inflation.
Last month, Medicare announced one of the largest increases ever in its ‘Part B’ monthly premium for outpatient care, nearly $22, from $148.50 currently to $170.10 starting in January.
The agency attributed roughly half the hike, about $11 a month, to the need for a contingency fund to cover Aduhelm, a new $56,000 Alzheimer’s drug from Biogen whose benefits have been widely questioned. For most Medicare enrollees, the premium is deducted from their Social Security checks. Without further action, it would swallow up a significant chunk of seniors’ 5.9% cost of living increase.”
Four People Indicted in International Telemedicine Health Care Fraud Kickback Scheme: “Beginning in May 2014, the defendants and their conspirators began to use the telemedicine company to generate a high volume of prescriptions for compounded medications and, later, durable medical equipment (DME), without regard to medical necessity and through the payment of kickbacks. The defendants agreed and arranged for health care providers associated with the telemedicine company to write prescriptions for compounded medications and DME without the establishment of any provider-patient relationship, in exchange for kickbacks, and in violation of certain state telemedicine laws. Woroboff, Willard, and Mills agreed to pay [Dr. Le] Thu approximately $35 per prescription. Thu wrote prescriptions without speaking to patients in exchange for those payments.”
About Covid-19
Pfizer’s anti-covid pill prevents severe illness and should work against omicron variant, company says: “Reinforcing an earlier analysis from November, Pfizer’s drug cut hospitalizations and deaths by nearly 90 percent when taken within three or five days of the onset of symptoms, the company announced. Preliminary laboratory studies suggest the easy-to-take drug will hold up against the omicron variant.”
Merck’s Covid Pill Might Pose Risks for Pregnant Women: “Scientists are especially worried about pregnant women, they said, because the drug could affect a fetus’s dividing cells, theoretically causing birth defects. Members of the F.D.A. expert committee expressed those same concerns during a public meeting on Nov. 30.”
Vermont 1st state to mandate at-home COVID-19 test coverage: “The emergency rule covers approximately 140,000 Vermonters who purchase commercial insurance in Vermont’s individual, small and large group markets as well as the Vermont Education Health Initiative.
The rule has an eight-test monthly limit and is retroactively effective through Dec. 1…”
Omicron variant more resistant to vaccine but causes less severe covid, major South African study concludes: “The study by Discovery Health, South Africa’s largest health insurer, of 211,000 positive coronavirus cases, of which 78,000 were attributed to omicron, showed that risk of hospital admissions among adults who contracted covid-19 was 29 percent lower than in the initial pandemic wave that emerged in March 2020.
However, the study, released Tuesday, found that the vaccine from U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and German partner BioNTech provided just 33 percent protection against infection, much less than the level for other variants detected in the country.
At the same time, the vaccine may offer 70 percent protection against being hospitalized with omicron…”
Roche Gets CE Mark for Rapid Antigen Test Distinguishing COVID-19 From Flu A/B: “The test kit, which delivers results in less than 30 minutes, works with Roche’s Navify Pass software, enabling individuals and healthcare professionals to store and share their test results and vaccine status. Results from the test are available in less than 30 minutes.
The company said it intends to file for Emergency Use Authorization from the FDA early in the new year.”
Monitoring Variant Proportions: From the CDC: The delta variant accounts for about 97% of Covid cases, while the omicron variant makes up the other ~3%.
Supreme Court won’t stop vaccine mandate for New York health care workers: “The Supreme Court on Monday declined to stop New York’s coronavirus vaccination mandate for health care workers that does not include an exception for religious objectors.
As it has done in past mandate cases, the court rejected a request from doctors, nurses and other medical workers who said they were being forced to choose between their livelihoods and their faith. They said they should receive a religious exemption because the state’s rule allows one for those who decline the vaccine for medical reasons.
As is often the case in requests for emergency relief, the justices in the majority did not give a reason for declining the request to stop the order, which went into effect in November. Last month, the court also denied a similar request from health care workers in Maine.”
However: Appeals court refuses to reinstate CMS vaccine rule: “The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals on Dec. 13 denied the Biden administration's request to lift a district court's injunction that blocked the mandate, which requires COVID-19 vaccination for eligible staff at healthcare facilities participating in Medicare and Medicaid programs. The order comes after U.S. District Judge Matthew Schelp in the Eastern District of Missouri granted 10 states' request for a preliminary injunction on Nov. 29.
The order from the appeals court applies to the 10 states that joined the lawsuit: Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming. A separate preliminary injunction granted in Louisiana blocked the vaccination mandate in all other states.”
Uptick in Concern over COVID Infection: “Thirty-six percent of Americans are extremely or very worried about themselves or a family member being infected with coronavirus. This is up from 25% who felt the same in October. In August, as the delta variant caused a spike in cases, 41% were concerned about infection.
While 71% of those who are vaccinated still say they’re at least somewhat worried about infections, 55% of those who are unvaccinated say they have little or no worry. Eighty-one percent of Democrats say they’re at least somewhat worried, compared with 49% of Republicans.
More than half of adults continue to stay away from large groups, wear a face mask, and avoid nonessential travel. However, fewer people are using these precautions than before vaccines were widely available. In February, more than 7 in 10 Americans reported staying away from large groups, wearing face masks, and avoiding travel.
Vaccinated Americans are more likely to take these precautions than the unvaccinated. Democrats are also more likely than Republicans to say they’re regularly masking (72% to 33%), avoiding travel (63% to 36%), avoiding large groups (65% to 43%) and avoiding other people as much as possible (47% to 27%).”
The U.S. COVID-19 Vaccination Program at One Year: How Many Deaths and Hospitalizations Were Averted?: Highlights from a From the Commonwealth Fund report:
“In the absence of a vaccination program, there would have been approximately 1.1 million additional COVID-19 deaths and more than 10.3 million additional COVID-19 hospitalizations in the U.S. by November 2021.
Without the U.S. vaccination program, COVID-19 deaths would have been approximately 3.2 times higher and COVID-19 hospitalizations approximately 4.9 times higher than the actual toll during 2021.
If no one had been vaccinated, daily deaths from COVID-19 could have jumped to as high as 21,000 per day — nearly 5.2 times the level of the record peak of more than 4,000 deaths per day recorded in January 2021.”
About pharma
10 of the largest pharma companies, ranked by 2020 revenue: FYI
About healthcare IT
Computer-, smartphone-based treatments effective at reducing symptoms of depression: “Researchers conducted a meta-analysis of 83 studies testing digital applications for treating depression, dating as far back as 1990 and involving more than 15,000 participants in total, 80% adults and 69.5% women. All of the studies were randomized controlled trials comparing a digital intervention treatment to either an inactive control (e.g., waitlist control or no treatment at all) or an active comparison condition (e.g., treatment as usual or face-to-face psychotherapy) and primarily focused on individuals with mild to moderate depression symptoms.
Overall, researchers found that digital interventions improved depression symptoms over control conditions, but the effect was not as strong as that found in a similar meta-analysis of face-to-face psychotherapy. There were not enough studies in the current meta-analysis to directly compare digital interventions to face-to-face psychotherapy, and researchers found no studies comparing digital strategies with drug therapy.”
The Digital Experience is the Key Driver of Growth and Patient Retention, According to Press Ganey’s 2021 Consumer Report: “According to the analysis:
All generations are increasingly shopping online for healthcare. 44% of baby boomers and 60% of millennials and Gen Z prefer researching healthcare providers on their smartphone or tablet, representing a 27% and 13% increase from 2019, respectively.
Digital drives patient choice. In fact, they rely on digital resources more than twice as much as provider referrals when choosing a healthcare provider. On average, consumers use three different websites during their healthcare research process and five reviews before making a decision.
Search engines are just the start. Among the top five websites used, consumers rely on a brand’s website, WebMD, Healthgrades and Facebook the most to research a provider.
Online reviews prevent referral leakage. 83% of patients go online to read reviews about a provider after they receive a referral. 84% would not see their referred provider if they had less than a four-star rating.
Customer service is the new bedside manner. Assuming quality care is received, patients rate ‘customer service’ (71%) and ’communication’ (64%) as more important than even ‘bedside manner’ when it comes to rating a five-star experience.
Telehealth isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. More than one-third of patients have used telehealth in the past year—a 38% increase since 2019—and usage surged among baby boomers during the same period.”
A machine and human reader study on AI diagnosis model safety under attacks of adversarial images: “We perform a study to investigate the behaviors of an AI diagnosis model under adversarial images generated by Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) models and to evaluate the effects on human experts when visually identifying potential adversarial images. Our GAN model makes intentional modifications to the diagnosis-sensitive contents of mammogram images in deep learning-based computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) of breast cancer. In our experiments the adversarial samples fool the AI-CAD model to output a wrong diagnosis on 69.1% of the cases that are initially correctly classified by the AI-CAD model. Five breast imaging radiologists visually identify 29%-71% of the adversarial samples. Our study suggests an imperative need for continuing research on medical AI model’s safety issues and for developing potential defensive solutions against adversarial attacks.”
Scripps' Epic EHR automates supply price markups up to 675% : “Scripps Memorial Hospital's Epic EHR uses an automated tool to mark up prices of supplies between 575 and 675 percent in real time within the EHR…”
Satisfaction with telemedicine takes a tumble but still comes out on top, new report says: “Despite overall satisfaction of consumers with telemedicine, patients were less impressed by the services this year as compared to last, a new report from Rock Health published Dec. 13 reveals.
Rock Health conducted a digital health consumer adoption survey that asked 7,980 U.S adults about their relationship to digital health.
It found that satisfaction with telemedicine decreased in 2021. In 2020, 53 percent of respondents reported higher satisfaction with live video telemedicine compared to in-person interactions. However, in 2021, only 43 percent of respondents reported the same.
Physicians also reported being less satisfied with telehealth, with 58 percent of physicians surveyed viewing telehealth more favorably since the pandemic in 2021 as compared to 64 percent in 2020.”