About Covid-19
Covid is making flu and other common viruses act in unfamiliar ways Common viruses appear more virulent than before Covid-19 and are occurring at times of the year they were not usually seen.
About health insurance
Orlando Health alleges healthcare sharing ministry told patients to hide membership for cheaper care “Florida-based nonprofit health system Orlando Health has sued faith-based healthcare-sharing ministry Liberty HealthShare, alleging that the organization instructed patients to hide their memberships in order to secure reduced rates for their care.”
This article is a great case study of a typical “ healthcare-sharing ministry.”
Spotlight on Medicare Advantage: An eHealth Survey June 2022 Some highlights:
—88% of enrollees express satisfaction with their Medicare Advantage plan, and 86% would recommend Medicare Advantage to family or friends; only 6% express dissatisfaction with their plan.
—Two thirds (67%) of those who chose Medicare Advantage over Medigap did so because Medigap was too expensive. If forced to look for similar coverage elsewhere, 73% of Medicare Advantage enrollees say they could afford monthly premiums of no more than $50.”
The latter finding might explain the first one.
Humana launches rebranded pharmacy businesses “Humana's pharmacy and specialty pharmacy businesses are now under its CenterWell brand.
Humana Pharmacy and Humana Speciality Pharmacy will now be known as CenterWell Pharmacy and CenterWell Specialty Pharmacy, according to a June 13 Humana news release.
The insurer's pharmacy benefit manager, Humana Pharmacy Solution, is keeping its name, according to the news release. Enclara Pharmacia, which provides pharmacy management services for the hospice industry, is also keeping its name.”
About hospitals and healthcare systems
Best Children's Hospitals 2022-2023 Honor Roll and Overview FYI- from US News.
About pharma
The top 10 most profitable pharma companies in 2021 Ranked by earnings not sales. “With $24 billion in net income, Novartis was unexpectedly the most profitable pharma company in 2021, beating Pfizer and J&J, which recorded $22 billion and $21 billion, respectively. While Novartis did improve its profit margins as a percentage of sales, it was one special item that helped nearly triple the Swiss pharma’s net profit.”
Basaglar 'Copycat' Insulin for Diabetes Has Advantages Over Lantus “The follow-on or copycat insulin glargine product Basaglar (Lilly) is similar to brand-name Lantus (Sanofi) in terms of efficacy and safety for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, but Basaglar cost less and had better adherence, new real-world data show.”
The article did not give the price of new medication.
Lilly, Incyte win FDA okay for first systemic alopecia areata treatment in US “The FDA announced Monday that it cleared Eli Lilly and Incyte's oral JAK1/JAK2 inhibitor Olumiant (baricitinib) for adults with severe alopecia areata, making it the first approval in the US of a systemic treatment for the condition. Kendall Marcus, director of the dermatology division at the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said the decision "will help fulfill a significant unmet need."
The priority review filing was backed by results from the placebo-controlled Phase III BRAVE-AA1 and BRAVE-AA2 trials of patients who had ≥50% scalp hair loss as measured by the Severity of Alopecia Tool (SALT) for more than six months. Participants were randomised to receive Olumiant, at doses of 2mg or 4mg, or placebo every day.”
About the public’s health
Tobacco companies will be forced to reduce nicotine in U.S. cigarettes until they’re non-addictive, if the Biden administration has its way: report “Tobacco companies will be forced to reduce nicotine in cigarettes sold in the U.S. to nonaddictive, or minimally addictive, levels, if the Biden administration has its way.
The policy could be announced as early as this coming week, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday. But it likely won't take effect for several years. The U.S. Food and Drug administration would have to draft a proposed rule and open it for public comment. After it published the rule, tobacco companies could sue, delaying implementation.
Meanwhile, the U.K. government is considering raising the legal age for smoking each year until smoking is effectively outlawed, Bloomberg reported this week, adding that New Zealand plans a similar move that will eventually prohibit smoking.”
Brain lesions disrupting addiction map to a common human brain circuit “We analyzed two cohorts of patients addicted to smoking at the time of focal brain damage (cohort 1 n = 67; cohort 2 n = 62)…
Lesions disrupting smoking addiction occurred in many different brain locations but were characterized by a specific pattern of brain connectivity…
We conclude that brain lesions disrupting addiction map to a specific human brain circuit and that hubs in this circuit provide testable targets for therapeutic neuromodulation.”
About healthcare IT
The harm of class imbalance corrections for risk prediction models: illustration and simulation using logistic regression “Methods to correct class imbalance (imbalance between the frequency of outcome events and nonevents) are receiving increasing interest for developing prediction models. We examined the effect of imbalance correction on the performance of logistic regression models…
Imbalance correction led to models with strong miscalibration without better ability to distinguish between patients with and without the outcome event. The inaccurate probability estimates reduce the clinical utility of the model, because decisions about treatment are ill-informed… imbalance correction may even worsen model performance.”
Guidance on How the HIPAA Rules Permit Covered Health Care Providers and Health Plans to Use Remote Communication Technologies for Audio-Only Telehealth “The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) developed this guidance to help covered entities understand how they can use remote communication technologies for audio-only telehealth in compliance with the HIPAA Rules, including when OCR’s Notification of Enforcement Discretion for Telehealth Remote Communications (Telehealth Notification) is no longer in effect.”
I find it amusing that landline calls are exempt because they do not involve electronic communication as defined by HIPAA.
Arizona hospital says SSNs of 700,000 people leaked during April ransomware attack “In letters to victims recently made public, Yuma Regional Medical Center (YRMC) said it discovered a ransomware attack on April 25 and immediately took systems offline before contacting cybersecurity experts and law enforcement.”
Kaiser Permanente notifies nearly 70,000 patients of email data breach “Kaiser Permanente is notifying 69,589 patients of a data breach that occurred when someone accessed an employee's emails.
The emails contained protected health information, including first and last names and lab test results, but the health plan said it had no indication that the data was accessed or misused.”
Top 10 medical marketing agencies by revenue FYI
Comment from my co-author (Strategic Marketing for Health Care Organizations), Robert Stevens: “Many of these companies are in actuality pharma and medtech ad agencies. Marketing is a stretch.
An exception is nearby [he lives in N.C.] Syneos Health. It’s been a CRO [contract research organization] since 1999. Today Syneos does not want to be positioned as a CRO. It’s current positioning is as a ‘Biopharmaceutical Acceleration Model’ or BAM organization. That may be a good differentiator. The value prop, however, seems muddy.”
About healthcare finance
Where investment dollars are flowing in biotech startups “Biotech startups that utilize platform-based therapeutics received a large proportion of investment dollars from 2019 to 2021, according to a June 10 McKinsey article…
Here are five platform-based startup types to watch, as they received the most VC investment:
Cell therapy represented $7.7 billion of total funding.
Next-generation gene therapies brought in $7.6 billion in funding.
Precision medicine companies got $4.5 billion in funding.
Machine-learning-enabled drug discovery brought in $4.4 billion.
Startups focusing on hard-to-hit targets, or "undruggable" targets, got $4 billion in funding.”