About the public’s health
Oxford malaria vaccine maintains bite after booster; Researchers hope for shot approval in 2023 “New phase 2b findings show an investigational malaria vaccine booster from the University of Oxford maintained high efficacy levels a year after the initial three-shot regimen—a feat in a disease area that scientists have long struggled to develop effective vaccines and therapies.
The vaccine, dubbed R21/Matrix-M, was developed by the University of Oxford and includes Novavax's proprietary saponin-based Matrix-M adjuvant. R21 is also being studied in a phase 3 trial aimed at licensing the shot for widespread use by 2023, with topline results anticipated later this year.”
Distance to supermarkets is a risk factor for CKD, hypertension, diabetes development The headline is the message.
About healthcare IT
Remote vs In-home Physician Visits for Hospital-Level Care at Home “In this 2-site randomized clinical trial of 172 patients, the mean adverse event count was 6.8 per 100 patients for patients receiving remote care vs 3.9 per 100 patients for control patients, for a difference of 2.8, supporting noninferiority, although 19% of patients receiving remote care required in-home physician visits. Patient experience was noninferior.”
Electronic Connectivity Among US Hospitals Treating Shared Patients “In total, hospitals in our sample participated in 127 HIE networks. Thirty-two of these were vendor/national HIE networks and 95 were community HIE networks. Seventy-nine percent of hospitals participated in at least one HIE network, with 61% participating in a vendor/national network and 58% participating in a community network. On average, each hospital participated in 1.6 networks: 1.0 vendor/national networks and 0.6 community networks.”
Medicare Telehealth Services During the First Year of the Pandemic: Program Integrity Risks From the HHS OIG: “We identified 1,714 providers whose billing for telehealth services during the first year of the pandemic poses a high risk to Medicare. These providers billed for telehealth services for about half a million beneficiaries. They received a total of $127.7 million in Medicare fee-for-service payments.
Each of these 1,714 providers had concerning billing on at least 1 of 7 measures we developed that may indicate fraud, waste, or abuse of telehealth services. All of these providers warrant further scrutiny. For example, they may be billing for telehealth services that are not medically necessary or were never provided.
In addition, more than half of the high-risk providers we identified are a part of a medical practice with at least one other provider whose billing poses a high risk to Medicare. This may indicate that certain practices are encouraging such billing among their associated providers. Further, 41 providers whose billing poses a high risk appear to be associated with telehealth companies; however, there is currently no systematic way to identify these companies in the Medicare data.”
See the report for recommendations.
About healthcare finance
R1 RCM gets $2.3B in financing “Capital One Commercial Bank said Sept. 7 that it was the joint lead arranger for an amended and restated credit facility for R1 RCM.
The facility increased R1 RCM's borrowing capacity from $1.2 billion to $2.3 billion, according to a Capital One news release emailed to Becker's…”