Amazon scoops up primary care company One Medical in deal valued at $3.9B “The online retail giant plans to buy One Medical for $18 per share in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $3.9 billion including the company's net debt, according to a press release.
The deal expands Amazon's reach into primary care as it also operates Amazon Care, which offers both virtual care services as well as in-home care to employees and other companies.
One Medical went public in January 2020 at a price of $14 a share. But shares in One Medical’s parent company, 1life Healthcare, have lost 75% of their value in the past year.”
About Covid-19
Study shows AstraZeneca's Covid-19 mAb Evusheld may not work against dominant Omicron strain “AstraZeneca’s prophylactic treatment for Covid-19, known as Evusheld, has survived where other mAbs failed, showing efficacy for the immunocompromised and others who cannot be vaccinated across multiple variants, including Delta and several Omicron subvariants.
But new correspondence published in the New England Journal of Medicine yesterday says that the dominant Omicron subvariants right now are much less susceptible to Evusheld, which is a combination of tixagevimab and cilgavimab. That data may end up resulting in a pause in the use of Evusheld, although an AstraZeneca spokesperson insists that it won’t, and HHS has not indicated in recent days that it’ll make that pause anytime soon.”
The key words are “much less susceptible,” not zero. From the last paragraph of the study: “The main limitation of our study is the lack of clinical data on the efficacy of these monoclonal antibodies and antiviral drugs for the treatment of patients infected with BA.2.12.1, BA.4, or BA.5 subvariants. Overall, our data suggest that the three small-molecule antiviral drugs remdesivir, molnupiravir, and nirmatrelvir may have therapeutic value against the sublineages BA.2.12.1, BA.4, and BA.5 of SARS-CoV-2 omicron variants.”
Waning effectiveness of BNT162b2 and ChAdOx1 [Pfizer-BioNTech and AstraZeneca] covid-19 vaccines over six months since second dose: OpenSAFELY cohort study using linked electronic health records “Despite waning vaccine effectiveness, rates of covid-19 related hospital admission and death were substantially lower among vaccinated than unvaccinated adults up to 26 weeks after the second dose, with estimated vaccine effectiveness ≥80% for BNT162b2, and ≥75% for ChAdOx1. By weeks 23-26, rates of positive SARS-CoV-2 test in vaccinated people were similar to or higher than in unvaccinated people (adjusted hazard ratios up to 1.72 (1.11 to 2.68) for BNT162b2 and 1.86 (1.79 to 1.93) for ChAdOx1).”
About health insurance
Justice Department Charges Dozens for $1.2 Billion in Health Care Fraud “The Department of Justice today announced criminal charges against 36 defendants in 13 federal districts across the United States for more than $1.2 billion in alleged fraudulent telemedicine, cardiovascular and cancer genetic testing, and durable medical equipment (DME) schemes.
The nationwide coordinated law enforcement action includes criminal charges against a telemedicine company executive, owners and executives of clinical laboratories, durable medical equipment companies, marketing organizations, and medical professionals.
Additionally, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Center for Program Integrity (CPI) announced today that it took adverse administrative actions against 52 providers involved in similar schemes. In connection with the enforcement action, the department seized over $8 million in cash, luxury vehicles, and other fraud proceeds…
The coordinated federal investigations announced today primarily targeted alleged schemes involving the payment of illegal kickbacks and bribes by laboratory owners and operators in exchange for the referral of patients by medical professionals working with fraudulent telemedicine and digital medical technology companies.”
About hospitals and healthcare systems
M&A Quarterly Activity Report:Q2 2022 “M&A activity between hospitals and health systems in the second quarter of 2022 returned to both trendlines we have been tracking since the pandemic began. First, the number of announced transactions, 13, remained below what we saw in the years leading up to 2020 but was consistent with numbers for Q2 2021, when 14 transactions were announced. Second, we again saw the small number of transactions offset by a high percentage of ‘mega’ transactions, in which the smaller party or seller has annual revenues in excess of $1 billion (an exception to this trend was Q1 of this year, when no mega transactions were announced and 10 of the 12 announced transactions had smaller parties with less than $500 million in annual revenue). Indeed, the average size of the smaller party reached a record-setting $1.5 billion this quarter…
Total transacted revenue also reached an historic high of $19.2 billion this quarter. This more than doubles the total transacted revenue of $8.5 billion in Q2 2021, which had a similar number of announced transactions.”
About pharma
PhRMA funnels $10M into new grassroots clinical trial diversity initiative—and hopes Big Pharma will take note “The industry group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) is hoping to break the mold, investing $10 million to launch 10 community-based trial sites in a new diversity initiative led by three medical schools.
Dubbed Equitable Breakthroughs in Medicine Development, the initiative aims to tackle systemic barriers that communities of color and historically underserved patients face when trying to access clinical trials. The goal is to build sustainable, local clinical trial infrastructure with efforts that address lack of outreach, patient mistrust and lack of available sites.
Participating schools are the Yale School of Medicine, the Morehouse School of Medicine and its Research Centers in the Minority Institutions Coordinating Center and Vanderbilt University Medical Center.”
About the public’s health
Systemic or Vaginal Hormone Therapy After Early Breast Cancer: A Danish Observational Cohort Study “Women treated for breast cancer (BC) often suffer genitourinary syndrome of menopause. These symptoms may be alleviated by vaginal estrogen therapy (VET) or menopausal hormone therapy (MHT). However, there are concerns of risks of recurrence of BC and death following treatment…
In postmenopausal women treated for early-stage estrogen receptor–positive BC, neither VET nor MHT was associated with increased risk of recurrence or mortality. A subgroup analysis revealed an increased risk of recurrence, but not mortality, in patients receiving VET with adjuvant aromatase inhibitors.”
Polygenic Risk, Midlife Life's Simple 7, and Lifetime Risk of Stroke “Recent genetic discoveries in stroke have unleashed the potential of using genetic information for risk prediction and health interventions aimed at disease prevention. We sought to estimate the lifetime risk of stroke (LTRS) by levels of genetic risk and to investigate whether optimal cardiovascular health can offset the negative impact of high genetic risk on lifetime risk of stroke…
Maintaining an optimal midlife cardiovascular health offsets the lifetime risk of stroke by 30% to 43% and lengthens the years lived free of stroke by 5 to 6 years.”
Georgia’s Six-Week Abortion Ban Can Take Effect, Court Rules The last line of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals decision states: “Because a constitutional right to abortion does not exist, we decline to engage in abortion exceptionalism.”
Unvaccinated Rockland County, N.Y. man diagnosed with polio “The first U.S. case of polio in nearly a decade has been confirmed in an unvaccinated individual in Rockland County, N.Y., local and state health officials announced Thursday.
While the origins of the case are still being investigated, the 20-year-old man had traveled to Poland and Hungary earlier this year and was hospitalized in June, according to a public health official close to the investigation who was not authorized to speak on the record. He was initially diagnosed with a possible case of acute flaccid myelitis, caused by inflammation of the spinal cord that results in severe muscle weakness and paralysis. But subsequent testing detected a type of polio that indicates transmission from outside the United States, according to a joint alert Thursday from the New York State Health Department and Rockland County.”
About healthcare IT
VA’s $16 billion medical records overhaul could triple in cost “Veterans Affairs officials announced Wednesday they will delay the planned deployment of the department’s new electronic medical records to sites in Idaho amid concerns the $16-billion project could be endangering veterans and may triple in cost…
The 10-year, $16 billion project was approved in 2017 by President Donald Trump and touted by his administration as a transformational event for the department by putting VA records on the same system as the Department of Defense for the first time. Military officials began using a new records system based on the same software in 2015.”