About Covid-19
FDA advisers favor retiring original covid shot and using newer version “Advisers to the Food and Drug Administration on Thursday unanimously endorsed retiring the original coronavirus shot in favor of one that targets both the original strain of the coronavirus and the omicron variant.”
California law aiming to curb COVID misinformation blocked by judge “A U.S. judge has blocked a California law that sought to penalize doctors who spread ‘misinformation or disinformation’ about COVID-19 while he considers a pair lawsuits challenging it on free speech grounds.
Senior U.S. District Judge William Shubb in Sacramento ruled on Wednesday that Assembly Bill 2098, which was signed last October by California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, was too vague for doctors to know what kind of statements might put them at risk of being penalized.’COVID-19 is a quickly evolving area of science that in many aspects eludes consensus,’ he wrote.”
About health insurance/insurers
States jump into fight over prior authorization requirements “Efforts to overhaul the prior authorization process are hitting a crescendo in state legislatures, with at least 40 states expected to consider measures that would streamline the way doctors must obtain health plan sign-offs before they can order procedures, tests or treatments.”
CMS OKs California Medicaid experiment for inmates “The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is approving California’s…request to amend the section 1115(a) demonstration titled, ‘California Advancing and Innovating Medi-Cal (CalAIM)’… to provide limited coverage for certain services furnished to certain incarcerated individuals for up to 90 days immediately prior to the beneficiary’s expected date of release… CMS is also approving federal matching funds for Designated State Health Programs (DSHP) that California will use, going forward, to partially support the Providing Access and Transforming Health (PATH) program that was approved as part of CalAIM on December 29, 2021.”
About hospitals and healthcare systems
Minnesota attorney general asks Sanford Health, Fairview Health Services to delay 58-hospital merger “The Minnesota attorney general’s office has formally asked Sanford Health and Fairview Health Services to postpone the March 31 closing date of their proposed merger as it seeks more information on the repercussions of the deal, Chief Deputy Attorney General John Keller said during a public meeting held Wednesday evening.
The Midwest nonprofit health systems had announced their 58-hospital merger plans in November, saying at the time that joining together would expand care quality and access across their rural and urban markets. The resulting organization would employ nearly 80,000 people.”
HCA posts $5.6B profit for 2022 “Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Healthcare saw revenue of $15.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022, up from $15.1 billion over the same period in 2021, according to its financial report released Jan. 27.
The 182-hospital, for-profit system had a net income of $2.08 billion in the quarter ended Dec. 31, 2022, up from $1.81 billion over the same period last year.”
About the public’s health
FDA eases blood donation ban on gay and bisexual men after years of protest “Gay and bisexual men in monogamous relationships will no longer be forced to abstain from sex to donate blood under federal guidelines announced Friday, ending a vestige of the earliest days of the AIDS crisis.
The proposed relaxation of restrictions by the Food and Drug Administration follows years of pressure by blood banks, the American Medical Association and LGBT rights organizations to abandon rules some experts say are outdated, homophobic and ineffective at keeping the nation’s blood supply safe.”
Gesundheit! Allergies Affect More Than One in Four "The rate of 27.2% among children 17 years and under represented an increase from previous decades, reported Benjamin Zablotsky, PhD, of the NCHS in Hyattsville, Maryland, and coauthors in NCHS Data Brief.
Among adults, 31.8% reported experiencing at least one allergic condition in 2021, Amanda E. Ng, MPH, and Peter Boersma, MPH, of the NCHS, reported in the same publication.
Seasonal and food allergies were more prevalent in adults than children in the U.S.”
[Note: This article from MEDPAGE TODAY is much more readable than the original. More data are in this article.]
It’s easy to buy flavored vapes in California, even in cities with longtime bans “California cities are supposed to be cracking down on sales of flavored vapes, which are now illegal across the state. But even cities that have banned such vapes for years are unwilling — or unable — to police the sellers.
STAT visited 24 vape shops earlier this month in Oxnard, Ventura, Pasadena, El Monte, Carson and West Hollywood — all of which have had bans on flavored vapes on the books for at least a year; most for two or more years. Seventeen of the shops, or 70%, were selling the products anyway. One city is doing much better than the others: In Oxnard, where we hit five shops, none of the stores sold flavored vapes.
Many of the sellers of these products appeared to be openly flouting the law with impunity.”
About healthcare IT
Interoperability and Methods of Exchange among Hospitals in 2021 Study from healthIT.gov:
"HIGHLIGHTS
—In 2021, more than 6 in 10 hospitals engaged in key aspects of electronically sharing health information (send, receive, query) and integrating of summary of care records into EHRs, a 51 percent increase since 2017.
—Availability and usage of electronic health information received from outside sources at the point of care significantly increased over the last four years, reaching 62 and 71 percent, respectively, in 2021.
—Health Information Service Providers (HISPs) and HIEs were the most common methods used for electronic exchange among hospitals.
—About three-quarters of hospitals participate in health information exchange organizations (HIEs) and about 35 percent participate in both HIEs and national networks.
—In 2021, 39 percent of hospitals reported participating in more than one of four measured national networks.
—Nearly 90 percent of hospitals upgraded their EHRs to 2015 Edition through 2021 and 74 percent of hospitals adopted bulk data export technology.”
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland Delivers Remarks on the Disruption of Hive Ransomware Variant “We are here to announce that last night, the Justice Department dismantled an international ransomware network responsible for extorting and attempting to extort hundreds of millions of dollars from victims in the United States and around the world.
Known as the ‘Hive’ ransomware group, this network targeted more than 1,500 victims around the world since June of 2021…
In one instance in August 2021, Hive affiliates deployed ransomware on computers owned by a Midwest hospital. At a time when COVID-19 was surging in communities around the world, the Hive ransomware attack prevented this hospital from accepting any new patients. The hospital was also forced to rely on paper copies of patient information. It was only able to recover its data after it paid a ransom…”