About health insurance/insurers
Home Health Agencies Get $125M Payment Boost from Medicare “Home health agencies will receive a 0.7 percent Medicare payment boost under the calendar year (CY) 2023 Home Health Prospective Payment System (HH PPS) Rate Update final rule, translating to an extra $125 million next year.
The final rule released yesterday says that the Medicare payment increase reflects a 4.0 percent home health payment update percentage, which will add $725 million, and a 0.2 percent increase because of an update to the fixed-dollar loss ratio (FDL) used in determining outlier payments, which will add $35 million.”
CMS Finalizes Medicare Reimbursement Increase for ESRD Facilities “CMS has finalized a 3.1 percent increase in Medicare reimbursement for end-stage renal disease (ESRD) facilities in the Calendar Year (CY) 2023 ESRD Prospective Payment System (PPS) final rule.
Medicare will pay a projected $7.9 billion in 2023 to the 7,800 ESRD facilities that furnish renal dialysis services to beneficiaries. The CY 2023 ESRD PPS base rate is $265.57, representing a $7.67 increase from the current base rate of $257.90.”
About hospitals and healthcare systems
Price Transparency Impact Report See page 14 for a summary of compliance rates.
About pharma
Walgreens-Backed VillageMD Said to Explore Deal for Summit “VillageMD, which is majority owned by Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc., is exploring a deal to merge with Warburg Pincus-backed Summit Health, according to people familiar with the matter.
The acquisition by primary-care provider VillageMD of Summit, a health-care network and the parent of CityMD, would value the combined entity at between $5 billion to $10 billion, said the people, who asked to not be identified because the matter isn’t public.”
About the public’s health
A new tool to prevent malaria shows promise: Antibody drugs “A single dose of an antibody drug provided strong protection against malaria infections during the six-month rainy season in Mali, an international team of researchers announced Monday. The promising result, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, lays the groundwork for a new tool to help defeat a parasitic disease that last year killed more than 600,000 people — mostly children.”
Association of Maternal Caffeine Consumption During Pregnancy With Child Growth “In this cohort study, at ages 4 to 8 years, children of women with low measured caffeine and paraxanthine during pregnancy were shorter than the children of women who consumed no caffeine during pregnancy, with increasing gaps in height in a historical cohort through age 8 years. There were no clear patterns of weight or body mass index changes.”
Shopping for ACA Health Insurance? Here’s What’s New This Year ACA plans’ open enrollment starts today. This article from KFF.org is an excellent summary of new features.
Cholera Outbreaks Surge Worldwide as Vaccine Supply Drains “A record number of cholera outbreaks around the globe, driven by droughts, floods and armed conflicts, has sickened hundreds of thousands of people and so severely strained the supply of cholera vaccines that global health agencies are rationing doses.
Outbreaks have been reported in the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, putting the health of millions at risk and overwhelming fragile health systems.”
About health technology
Pulse oximeters and their inaccuracies will get FDA scrutiny today. What took so long? ”Food and Drug Administration advisory committee Tuesday will take up the issue of whether pulse oximeters, the ubiquitous medical devices that became a mainstay for assessing patient oxygen levels during the Covid-19 pandemic, need to be regulated differently — or even completely reconceived — based on research showing the devices are less accurate in people with darker skin.
For many, the question is what took so long.
Studies dating back to 2005 show pulse oximeters tend to overestimate the amount of oxygen a patient with darker skin may actually have in their blood.”
About healthcare finance
JPMorgan creates healthcare venture capital team “JPMorgan has launched a healthcare venture capital team targeting the life sciences.
The team, Life Sciences Private Capital, plans to invest in early- to later-stage healthcare companies and seeks to capitalize on innovation in areas such as genetic medicine, autoimmune diseases, cardiometabolic diseases and rare disorders, according to a Nov. 1 press release from JPMorgan.”