About Covid-19
FDA authorizes adolescent use of Omicron-specific boosters “The FDA has authorized Pfizer and BioNTech’s booster in children ages 5 through 11, the companies announced on Wednesday, as well as Moderna’s formulation in kids 6 through 17 years old. Both shots are specific to the Omicron BA.4/BA.5 subvariants, which account for more than 80% of cases in the US, according to Pfizer.”
About health insurance/insurers
Biden administration's 'family glitch' fix kicks in soon “Individuals who do not have access to affordable health insurance through their employers can qualify for subsidies to purchase plans through the ACA marketplace. These affordability definitions only applied to individuals, not families, meaning many people were not eligible for subsidies.
The IRS and Treasury Department are implementing the final rule designed to fix the glitch, according to a White House press release issued Oct. 11.
Starting next month, people can sign up for subsidies for families if they cannot receive affordable insurance from their employer, according to the release.”
About hospitals and healthcare systems
Expansion of the Veterans Health Administration Network and Surgical Outcomes “In this nonrandomized regression discontinuity study of 615 473 unique surgical procedures among 498 427 patients, expanded access to care was associated with a greater proportion of surgical procedures in a community setting, and this proportion varied by procedure type. However, no difference in postoperative emergency department visits, inpatient readmissions, or mortality was found between VHA-provided and VHA-paid procedures in the community setting.
Meaning Expanding access to health care outside of the VHA was associated with a shift in the location of surgical procedures among veterans but had no association with postoperative outcomes; these findings may assuage concerns of worsened patient outcomes resulting from care coordination issues when care is expanded outside of a single health care system.”
About the public’s health
NOWHERE TO GO: MATERNITY CARE DESERTS ACROSS THE U.S. (2022 REPORT) Report from The March of Dimes: “THE NEW FINDINGS:
Areas where there is low or no access affect up to 6.9 million women and almost 500,000 births across the U.S.
This includes a five percent increase in counties that have less maternity access since 2020.
In maternity care deserts alone, approximately 2.2 million women of childbearing age and almost 150,000 babies are affected.
There’s a two percent increase in counties that are maternity care deserts since our 2020 report. That’s 1,119 counties and an additional 15,933 women with no maternity care.
Florida had the most women impacted by improvements to maternity care access (more than 92,000).
Ohio had the most women impacted by overall reductions in access to care (over 97,000).”
About healthcare IT
Survey Finds Majority of Healthcare Consumers Conditioned to Not Shop Around for the Best Price “6 in 10 Americans have never tried to research pricing for services; 58% of Americans would shop around for optimal pricing in healthcare if pricing data is provided prior to service needed.”
25% of ransomware attacks cause healthcare organizations to halt operations, study says “A new study from cybersecurity company Trend Micro Incorporated found that 25 percent of healthcare organizations hit by ransomware attacks were forced to halt operations completely.
The study also revealed that 86 percent of global healthcare organizations affected by ransomware attacks suffered operational outages, according to the Oct. 11 Trend Micro news release.”