About Covid-19
Booster shots in U.S. have strongly protected against severe disease from omicron variant, CDC studies show: “One of the new CDC reports analyzed data from hundreds of thousands of emergency room visits, urgent care visits and hospitalizations between August 2021 and Jan. 5, 2022. It showed that a third dose of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna shots reduces the chance of hospitalization by 90 percent compared to unvaccinated people, and reduces the chance of a trip to the emergency room by 82 percent. The data covered a period that includes three weeks when omicron was the predominant variant.”
More than 2 dozen drugmakers to make Merck’s COVID-19 pill: “A U.N.-backed organization announced Thursday that it has signed agreements with more than two dozen generic drug makers to produce versions of Merck’s COVID-19 pill to supply 105 developing countries.
The Medicines Patent Pool said the deals would allow drug companies to make both the raw ingredients for molnupiravir and the finished product itself.”
How Are Private Insurers Covering At-Home Rapid COVID Tests?: An excellent up-to-date review of major insurers’ policies.
Center For COVID Control Closed For ‘Foreseeable Future’ In Illinois Amid Federal, State Investigations: “The Center for COVID Control, an embattled chain of testing pop-ups, won’t reopen in Illinois amid an investigation from state authorities, the Illinois Attorney General’s Office announced Thursday night.
The company closed all its testing sites Jan. 14 as it faces federal and state investigations. It was set to reopen some locations Friday — but its leaders have agreed to stay closed in Illinois for the “foreseeable future” after the Illinois Attorney General’s Office contacted them, according to a news release from that agency.
The company… has said it has 300 locations around the United States. It has been paid more than $124 million for testing from the federal government since the start of the pandemic and has processed more than 400,000 tests.”
Burned Out Health-Care Workers Get $103 Million Boost From HHS: “A $103 million investment from the Biden administration will support health-care workers facing burnout as they enter their third pandemic year.”
Association of Major Depressive Symptoms With Endorsement of COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation Among US Adults: “In this survey study including 15 464 US adults, people with moderate or greater major depressive symptoms on an initial survey were more likely to endorse at least 1 of 4 false statements about COVID-19 vaccines on a subsequent survey, and those who endorsed these statements were half as likely to be vaccinated.
These findings suggest another potential benefit of public health efforts to address depressive symptoms, namely reducing susceptibility to misinformation.”
Decoy vesicles protect against COVID-19 from coronavirus variants in early tests: “Evolving variants of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus are threatening the efficacy of existing COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics. Now, a group of scientists from Northwestern University and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center showed that some naturally occurring tiny vesicles isolated from COVID-19 patients could fight off an infection from various subtypes of coronaviruses.
The team identified tiny cell-released lipid particles that expressed a protein called ACE2 from COVID-19 patients’ blood. These circulating extracellular vesicles that express ACE2 (evACE2) blocked infections from different coronavirus variants in lab dishes. Delivered via the nose, the nanoparticles also protected mice from COVID-19. The results were published in Nature Communications.
The researchers believe evACE2 could be developed as a biological product for prevention and treatment of COVID-19 caused by current and future SARS-CoV-2 variants and potentially other coronaviruses as well.
About health insurance
Florida Providers, Insurers Won't Use Federal Surprise Billing Resolution Process: “Healthcare providers and insurers in Florida will use the state's own dispute resolution process for out-of-network bills instead of the controversial methodology in the federal No Surprises Act. About 30 states, including Florida, already had their own laws governing balance billing when the new federal balance billing ban was passed. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is now determining whether those state laws can supersede the No Surprises Act when it comes to issues like payment dispute resolution. This week, the agency disclosed its finding that Florida's methodology will determine payment resolution in most situations. That's on top of about a dozen other states found to have so-called ‘specified state laws,’ meaning their own laws will supersede at least some aspects of the federal balance billing law.”
CVS Health and Uber Health partner on free medical transportation to reduce barriers to care: “Those rides, coordinated by Uber’s healthcare arm, will be available to high-risk populations in Atlanta; Columbus, Ohio; and Hartford, Connecticut, leveraging ride-sharing technology to reduce barriers to care.”
Seven Texas Doctors and a Hospital CEO Agree to Pay over $1.1 Million to Settle Kickback Allegations: “The settlements announced today resolves allegations that seven Texas doctors received thousands of dollars in illegal remuneration from eight management service organizations (MSOs) in exchange for ordering laboratory tests from Rockdale Hospital d/b/a Little River Healthcare (Little River), True Health Diagnostics LLC (True Health), and Boston Heart Diagnostics Corporation (Boston Heart). Little River allegedly funded the illegal remuneration to the doctors, in the form of volume-based commissions paid to independent contractor recruiters, who used MSOs to pay numerous doctors for their referrals. The MSO payments to the doctors were allegedly disguised as investment returns but in fact were based on, and offered in exchange for, the doctors’ referrals.”
The Prices That Commercial Health Insurers and Medicare Pay for Hospitals’ and Physicians’ Services: “CBO examined potential explanations for why the prices paid by commercial insurers are higher and more variable than those paid by Medicare FFS. CBO’s analysis and literature review suggest the following conclusions:
—Greater market power among providers consistently leads to prices for commercial insurers that are higher than Medicare FFS’s prices and that vary more widely, both among and within areas. Hospitals and physicians’ groups may have market power because they have a dominant share of the market in an area or because an insurer sees them as essential to its network of providers.
—Some of the variation in the prices that commercial insurers pay for hospitals’ and physicians’ services is explained by differences in the prices of inputs needed to deliver those services.
—Higher hospital quality is associated with higher prices paid by commercial insurers, although whether there is a causal link between quality and prices, and the direction of any such link, is not clear.
—The share of providers’ patients who are covered by Medicare and Medicaid is not related to higher prices paid by commercial insurers. That finding suggests that providers do not raise the prices they negotiate with commercial insurers to offset lower prices paid by government programs (a concept known as cost shifting).”
Comment: One must closely read the monograph to clarify these over-simplistic conclusions. Particularly, the variation in payments for both hospital and professional services vary widely among the states (less so for Medicare than FFS). Also, the last statement about cost shifting must be tempered by the fact that some providers with high Medicare/Medicaid populations may not have the ability to cost shift, e.g., inner city and disproportionate share hospitals. The monograph, however, is a great document for policy discussions about health care pricing and provider market power.
About hospitals and healthcare systems
Tufts Medical Center will close its pediatric hospital after more than a century of treating sick kids: “After more than a century of treating sick children, Tufts Medical Center will close its 41-bed pediatric hospital in July and use those beds to treat more adult patients.
Tufts will refer children who need hospitalization to Boston Children’s Hospital, its longtime competitor and the dominant pediatric hospital in the state.”
The top-rated hospitals for patient experience, state-by-state: “Using the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems scores from CMS, Becker's has compiled a list of the best hospitals for patient experience in each state. Hospitals either received five or four patient summary star ratings.”
About the public’s health
THE IMPACT OF ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION ON CARDIOVASCULAR HEALTH: MYTHS AND MEASURES : “In the Global Action Plan for Prevention and Control of NCDs, the World Health Organization (WHO) calls for a 10% relative reduction in the per capita use of alcohol between 2013-2030. Based on recent evidence, it has been concluded that there is ‘no safe level of alcohol consumption.’”
Update on abortion laws and court decisions: Excellent review of these issues in the Health 202 column in today’s Washington Post.
FDA urges doctors to prioritize blood draws as collection tube supplies dwindle: “The FDA is recommending that healthcare providers only perform blood draws considered medically necessary, after interruptions in the nationwide supply chain and the COVID-19 pandemic have caused broad shortages of blood specimen collection tubes.”
About healthcare IT
Francisco Partners to Acquire IBM’s Healthcare Data and Analytics Assets: “IBM and Francisco Partners, a leading global investment firm that specializes in partnering with technology businesses, today announced that the companies have signed a definitive agreement under which Francisco Partners will acquire healthcare data and analytics assets from IBM that are currently part of the Watson Health business. The assets acquired by Francisco Partners include extensive and diverse data sets and products, including Health Insights, MarketScan, Clinical Development, Social Program Management, Micromedex, and imaging software offerings.
The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of this year and is subject to customary regulatory clearances. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.”
The story is from IBM’s new site. The announcement did not give any reason for the sale.
Half of internet-connected devices in hospitals are vulnerable to hacks, report finds: “Over half of internet-connected devices used in hospitals have a vulnerability that could put patient safety, confidential data, or the usability of a device at risk, according to a new report from the healthcare cybersecurity company Cynerio…
The most common type of internet-connected device in hospitals was an infusion pump. These devices can remotely connect to electronic medical records, pull the correct dosage of a medication or other fluid, and dispense it to the patient. Infusion pumps were also the devices most likely to have vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers, the report found — 73 percent had a vulnerability. Experts worry that hacks into devices like these, which are directly connected to patients, could be used to hurt or threaten to hurt people directly. Someone could theoretically access those systems and change the dosage of a medication, for example.”
Does virtual care save money? Cigna study says yes, up to $141 per visit: “The analysis estimates that depending on the type of virtual care, virtual visits can save members as little as $93 per visit versus low-acuity care and as much as $141 per visit versus using an urgent care facility. Patients also save on average $120 per visit on specialist care by using virtual visits…
[It] also decreased the need for lab visits, resulting in $118 in savings per episode of care for urgent care episodes.”
About health technology
Kidneys From a Genetically Altered Pig Are Implanted in a Brain-Dead Patient: “Surgeons at the University of Alabama at Birmingham reported on Thursday that they had for the first time successfully transplanted kidneys from a genetically modified pig into the abdomen of a 57-year-old brain-dead man.”