About general trends
2022 Secular Trends Shaping the Health Economy A thoughtful monograph from Trilliant Health. Whether or not you agree with the assessments, it is thought-provoking piece that is a good basis for debate or discussion.
“Demand
TREND 1 | The Total Available Market (TAM) Of Commercially Insured Patients Is Shrinking
TREND 2 | Care Forgone During the Pandemic Is Permanently Lost, and the Observed Rebound Is Illusory TREND 3 | Higher Patient Acuity Is Likely to Materialize Eventually
TREND 4 | Projected Growth in Demand for Healthcare Services Is Tepid
TREND 5 | How Individuals Access the Healthcare System Varies
TREND 6 | Individuals Are Increasingly Making Healthcare Decisions Like Consumers
TREND 7 | Increasing Unaffordability Is Suppressing Healthcare Demand
Supply
TREND 8 | Migration of Care Delivery to Lower-Acuity Ambulatory Settings Is Accelerating
TREND 9 | Low-Acuity Healthcare Services Are Increasingly Being Commoditized
TREND 10 | The Impacts of Commoditization Are Predictable
TREND 11 | Provider Burnout Is Exacerbating the Long-Standing Physician Supply Shortage
TREND 12 | Only in Healthcare Can a Monopoly Lose Money, and Regulators Want to Prevent More of Them TREND 13 | More Providers Are Competing for Fewer Patients”
About health insurance/insurers
Millions at risk of losing health insurance if U.S. ends Covid public health emergency in January “KEY POINTS
When the public health emergency does end, HHS estimates up to 15 million people will be disenrolled from Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
HHS will give the public 60 days notice before lifting the public health emergency, Health Secretary Xavier Becerra said.
The end of the public health emergency will also result in reduced food benefits for the poor and could impact vaccine access at pharmacies among many other consequences.”
About hospitals and healthcare systems
Hospital price transparency ‘moving in the right direction’ “Almost two years after the Hospital Price Transparency Final Rule laid the foundation for public access to standard charges for medical services, most large U.S. health systems and payers are publishing negotiated prices for all items and services, a new report from Turquoise Health has found.
Nearly 4,200 hospitals and 80 insurers have published negotiated rates, representing a majority of covered lives in the United States, according to the San Diego-based startup, which has developed a scorecard for rating compliance.”
About healthcare IT
Advocate Aurora Health says 'pixel' data breach may affect 3 million patients “The health system, dually headquartered in Downers Grove, Ill., and Milwaukee, said it implemented the tracking tools to better understand patient behaviors but that the data may have been sent to Google or Facebook parent company Meta.
‘We have disabled and/or removed the pixels from our platforms and launched an internal investigation to better understand what patient information was transmitted to our vendors,’ Advocate Aurora Health said in a statement.”
About health technology
Philips' CPAP and BiPAP mask recall stretches to 22M devices, lands Class I FDA label “Just a few weeks after racking up its fifth Class I recall from the FDA this year, Philips has hit the half-dozen mark.
Its sixth of the classifications—which denote the agency’s most serious rating for a medical device safety issue—was given to a recall that began in August and centers around the magnetic clips and straps found in some masks used with its CPAP and BiPAP machines.
The FDA handed down its rating in a safety alert published Wednesday. In addition to adding the Class I tag, the regulator’s release also updated the number of devices included in the recall: An initial report Philips issued in early September said it affected “more than 17 million masks,” but the FDA now counts a total of 18,670,643 devices recalled in the U.S. alone, while entries in its recall database bring the global tally to more than 22 million masks.”