About Covid-19
FDA authorizes Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot coronavirus vaccine, adding to the nation’s arsenal against the pandemic:”The new vaccine, which is for adults 18 and older, has clear practical and logistical advantages over the first two vaccines — it does not have to be kept frozen, and there is no need for a second round of appointments. That makes it a boon for rural areas and other hard-to-reach communities, and for distribution to community health centers and physician offices that might not have the freezers needed for the other vaccines, public health officials say.”
US diagnostics company calls for national Covid testing guidelines: ”Thomas Polen, BD’s chief executive, said there had been a lot of talk on how to roll out rapid testing from airports to stadiums but companies were holding back from making large orders of tests until they knew what the rules were. He said the world was at a ‘transition point’ in testing, as the tests for symptomatic patients fall but orders for tests in ‘non-traditional’ settings have yet to ramp up. He said these organisations needed to know how often to test and how they would be expected to report the data.”
Biden Administration Strengthens Requirements that Plans and Issuers Cover COVID-19 Diagnostic Testing Without Cost Sharing and Ensures Providers are Reimbursed for Administering COVID-19 Vaccines to Uninsured: From CMS. The headline speaks for itself.
Exclusive: Hackers Break Into ‘Biochemical Systems’ At Oxford University Lab Studying Covid-19: “Oxford University confirmed on Thursday it had detected and isolated an incident at the Division of Structural Biology (known as ‘Strubi’) after Forbes disclosed that hackers were showing off access to a number of systems. These included machines used to prepare biochemical samples, though the university said it couldn’t comment further on the scale of the breach. It has contacted the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC), a branch of the British intelligence agency GCHQ, which will now investigate the attack.”
Have a case of a COVID variant? No one is going to tell you: “COVID-19 infections from variant strains are quickly spreading across the U.S., but there’s one big problem: Lab officials say they can’t tell patients or their doctors whether someone has been infected by a variant.
Federal rules around who can be told about the variant cases are so confusing that public health officials may merely know the county where a case has emerged but can’t do the kind of investigation and deliver the notifications needed to slow the spread, according to Janet Hamilton, executive director of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists.”
Lilly announces additional doses of neutralizing antibody therapy purchased by U.S. government to treat COVID-19: “The U.S. government has agreed to purchase a minimum of 100,000 doses of bamlanivimab (LY-CoV555) 700 mg and etesevimab (LY-CoV016) 1400 mg together, Eli Lilly and Company announced. Bamlanivimab and etesevimab together recently received emergency use authorization for the treatment of recently diagnosed, mild to moderate COVID-19 in patients who are at high risk of progressing to severe COVID-19 and/or hospitalization.”
About healthcare IT
More than 350K health records breached in February: More details here and at the HHS website.
Machine learning method accurately spots premalignant colon polyps: “Using radiomics, the system correctly differentiated between benign and potentially cancerous polyps more than 80% of the time, the data showed.
Radiomics is an analytical process allowing additional information to be gleaned from medical images, providing views of scans that are impossible with the naked eye.”
More precisely, the results have a sensitivity of 82%, and a specificity of 85%. But it would need to be a lot better to avoid unnecessary biopsies.
USQHIN ANNOUNCES THE LAUNCH OF THE NATIONAL ADT HUB NETWORK: “The National ADT Hub Network is USQHIN’s first use case and aims to foster collaboration between vendors, health information exchanges, health systems, government agencies, and health insurers. By working together, participating ‘Gateway Partners’ demonstrate their commitment to addressing individual patient well-being, critical national public health needs, and the greater good.
ADT notifications are sent when a patient is admitted to a facility, transferred within the facility, or discharged from the facility. Notifications are then sent to update physicians and care management teams on a patient’s status, thus improving post-discharge transitions, prompting follow-up, reducing readmissions, improving communication among providers, and supporting patients with multiple or chronic conditions. They can also serve an important role in being able to distribute demographic data and other attributes about patients quickly and efficiently to a patient’s extended care team.”
Bipartisan bills gain support for telehealth reform, SDOH coordination: “The new bipartisan Leveraging Integrated Networks in Communities (LINC) to Address Social Needs Act was introduced by Senators Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, and Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut.
The LINC to Address Social Needs Act would offer one-time seed funding for states to help establish communication between social service providers and healthcare organizations for referral, capacity management, and outcome tracking between social service providers and healthcare organizations.”
Teladoc's virtual visits reach 3M during Q4 as revenue grows to $383M: “Teladoc's 2020 revenue reached $1.1 billion as virtual care visits continued to soar.
The telehealth giant reported it delivered 10.6 million virtual visits last year, up 156% from 2019. The company's U.S. paid membership hit 51.8 million, up about 41% from 36.7 million users in 2019.
Teladoc, one of the nation's top telehealth providers, reported 3 million total virtual visits during the fourth quarter, up 139% from 1.2 million visits in the fourth quarter of 2019.”
Allscripts reports $414M in Q4 with strong growth in its Veradigm data business: “Allscripts is seeing strong growth in its life sciences data business as the market heats up among large health IT vendors.
That business, along with the steady return of patient volumes among its provider clients, helped the electronic health record (EHR) vendor post $414 million in revenue in the fourth quarter of 2020. Revenue was down 8% from $451 million a year ago.
The Chicago-based company reported full-year 2020 revenue of $1.6 billion, down 8% from $1.8 billion, according to 2020 and fourth-quarter earnings results.”
About hospitals and health systems
FTC drops challenge to Philadelphia health system merger: “The Federal Trade Commission is no longer challenging the merger between Jefferson Health and Einstein Healthcare Network, clearing the way for the two Philadelphia-based health systems to combine.”
Mayo Clinic annual revenue grows to $13.9B: “For the 12-month period ended Dec. 31, the 51-hospital system recorded revenue of $13.9 billion, a 1.5 percent increase from the same period one year prior. Mayo Clinic saw its medical service revenue drop slightly year over year to $11.5 billion, down from $11.6 billion recorded in 2019.
Mayo Clinic saw its expenses rise year over year to $13.2 billion, a 3.3 percent increase year over year. The health system attributed the expense increase to the unpredictability of the pandemic.”
About the public’s health
FDA clears novel neck collar to help protect student athletes' brains from sports-related injuries: “The FDA has cleared a new type of device worn around the back of the neck by athletes ages 13 and up, to help protect them from brain injuries caused by typically lighter, but repeated, impacts during sports.
The Q-Collar, developed by Q30 Innovations, doesn’t replace helmets or shoulder pads, but simply compresses the veins of the neck to increase the amount of blood around the brain. This helps cushion it within the skull, from hits that may not be enough to cause concussions on their own but can add up over time.”
About health insurance
It's like the Obamacare repeal-and-replace fight all over again: Reconciliation bills may be the only way Senate Democrats can pass health insurance legislation, for example, to modify ACA eligibility. This article is a great explanation of what this process allows and doesn’t allow.