About Covid-19
Labcorp COVID-19 Test That Can Identify Viral Strains Gets EUA “The FDA has granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to Laboratory Corporation of America’s Labcorp VirSeq SARS-CoV-2 next-generation sequencing test, which can differentiate between different strains of the virus that causes COVID-19.
The test analyzes positive samples identified using the company’s COVID-19 real-time polymerase chain reaction test, or its SARS-CoV-2 & Influenza A/B assay.”
About health insurance
Anthem launches Carelon, Wellpoint ahead of Elevance Health rebrand “Anthem will officially become Elevance Health on June 28, and, as part of its corporate rebrand, it's also launching new brands for two of its subsidiaries.
The insurer will consolidate its healthcare services businesses under one umbrella, called Carelon. Carelon is a combination of the word "care" with the suffix "lon," which means full or complete, representing the company's ambition to offer an end-to-end care experience.
Carelon will include Anthem's in-house pharmacy benefit manager Ingenio Rx as well as recent acquisitions such as Beacon Health Options, a behavioral health provider, and myNEXUS, a home healthcare company. Carelon will serve 1 in 3 people in the U.S., according to the announcement.”
Inaccuracies in Medicare’s Race and Ethnicity Data Hinder the Ability To Assess Health Disparities Form the HHS OIG: “Medicare’s enrollment race and ethnicity data are less accurate for some groups, particularly for beneficiaries identified as American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian/Pacific Islander, or Hispanic. Data that are not accurate limit the ability to assess health disparities. Limited race and ethnicity categories and missing information contribute to inaccuracies in the enrollment data. Although the use of an algorithm improves the existing data to some extent, it falls short of self-reported data. Finally, Medicare’s enrollment data on race and ethnicity are inconsistent with Federal data collection standards; these inconsistencies inhibit the work of identifying and improving health disparities within the Medicare population…
Accordingly, we recommend that CMS:
(1) develop its own source of race and ethnicity data, (2) use self-reported race and ethnicity information to improve data for current beneficiaries, (3) develop a process to ensure that the data are as standardized as possible, and (4) educate beneficiaries about CMS’s efforts to improve the race and ethnicity information. CMS did not explicitly concur with the first recommendation and concurred with the other three recommendations.”
About pharma
Pharmacy retail giant Walgreens looks to disrupt the clinical trials business Interesting read about how Walgreens will accomplish this goal.
About the public’s health
Biden launches plan to protect transgender youths’ health care “President Joe Biden on Wednesday will order his health agency to begin efforts to ban conversion therapy and expand access to gender-affirming treatment after a slew of state attempts to limit transgender health care, particularly for children.
The president’s executive order will call on the Department of Health and Human Services to clarify that federally funded programs cannot offer conversion therapy, a widely discredited practice that attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, and work on a public information campaign about the practice. Biden is also directing HHS to take “steps to address the barriers and exclusionary policies” to different types of health care and treatment.”
About healthcare IT
Facebook Is Receiving Sensitive Medical Information from Hospital Websites “The Markup tested the websites of Newsweek’s top 100 hospitals in America. On 33 of them we found the tracker, called the Meta Pixel, sending Facebook a packet of data whenever a person clicked a button to schedule a doctor’s appointment. The data is connected to an IP address—an identifier that’s like a computer’s mailing address and can generally be linked to a specific individual or household—creating an intimate receipt of the appointment request for Facebook…
The Markup also found the Meta Pixel installed inside the password-protected patient portals of seven health systems.”
Read the entire article. Researchers solicited comments from hospitals found to have this tracker. Many said they would remove it. The “lamest” response was from Northwestern Memorial: “The use of this type of code was vetted and is referenced in NM.org’s Terms and Conditions.” —Christopher King, chief media relations executive. I have a MyChart account at this hospital and was not given the opportunity to “opt out.”