About Covid-19
Federal official warns $191 billion in covid unemployment aid may have been misspent “The U.S. government may have misspent roughly $191 billion in pandemic unemployment benefits, a top federal watchdog told Congress on Wednesday, as Washington continues to uncover the vast and still-growing extent of the waste, fraud and abuse targeting coronavirus aid.
The new estimate — computed by Larry D. Turner, the inspector general of the Labor Department — galvanized House Republicans as they intensified their scrutiny of the roughly $5 trillion in emergency funds approved since the start of the crisis.”
Characterisation of SARS-CoV-2 variants in Beijing during 2022: an epidemiological and phylogenetic analysis “All of these genomes belong to the existing 123 Pango lineages, showing there are no persistently dominant variants or novel lineages.”[Emphasis added]
Early Treatment with Pegylated Interferon Lambda for Covid-19 “Among predominantly vaccinated outpatients with Covid-19, the incidence of hospitalization or an emergency department visit (observation for >6 hours) was significantly lower among those who received a single dose of pegylated interferon lambda than among those who received placebo.”
About health insurance/insurers
Big payers ranked by 2022 revenue FYI
UnitedHealthcare Introduces New Rewards Program With a Modern Approach to Well-Being “UnitedHealthcare Rewards is a new approach to wellness, offering members easy ways to earn up to $1,000 per year through integration with wearable devices and one-time reward activities…
Once enrolled, UnitedHealthcare Rewards members can earn incentives totaling up to $1,000 per year for completing the following ongoing and one-time activities:
Achieve 5,000 steps or more each day.
Complete 15 minutes or more of activity per day.
Track sleep for 14 nights.
Get a biometric screening.
Complete a health survey.
Select paperless billing.
Additional qualifying activities will be added throughout the year.”
About hospitals and healthcare systems
Hospital Rankings Shift Emphasis to Objective Data Away from Expert Opinion “The 2023-2024 Best Hospitals and Best Children’s Hospitals rankings slated to be published this summer will assign more weight to clinical outcomes and other objective measures of quality and less weight to U.S. News & World Report’s opinion survey of physicians. This shift reflects our ongoing effort to use more objective data in our hospital ranking methodologies.”
Tenet generates $102M in profits for Q4, releases 2023 financial outlook “Major for-profit hospital chain Tenet Healthcare generated $102 million in net income for the fourth quarter of 2022 and released its outlook for 2023.
The hospital chain announced in its earnings release Thursday that it generated $4.9 billion in net operating revenues. However, the net income of $102 million was down compared to the $250 million it generated in the same quarter in 2021.”
About pharma
Zantac Plaintiffs Must File Separate Complaints, Judge Says “A Florida federal judge ruled Tuesday that tens of thousands of consumers claiming they developed cancer after taking the heartburn medication Zantac could not be combined in multi-plaintiff personal injury cases in the wake of the court's decision that there was insufficient evidence the drug's active ingredient caused cancer. . . .”
About the public’s health
Recommended Adult Immunization Schedule, United States, 2023 FYI
Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses From the Cochrane Library: “Key messages
We are uncertain whether wearing masks or N95/P2 respirators helps to slow the spread of respiratory viruses based on the studies we assessed.
Hand hygiene programmes may help to slow the spread of respiratory viruses…
The observed lack of effect of mask wearing in interrupting the spread of influenza‐like illness (ILI) or influenza/COVID‐19 in our review has many potential reasons, including: poor study design; insufficiently powered studies arising from low viral circulation in some studies; lower adherence with mask wearing, especially amongst children; quality of the masks used; self‐contamination of the mask by hands; lack of protection from eye exposure from respiratory droplets (allowing a route of entry of respiratory viruses into the nose via the lacrimal duct); saturation of masks with saliva from extended use (promoting virus survival in proteinaceous material); and possible risk compensation behaviour leading to an exaggerated sense of security...”
Comment: The takeaways (for me) are: continue to wear masks and wash your hands.
About healthcare IT
Epic to connect hospitals with outside labs, diagnostic firms through EHR “EHR vendor Epic is expanding its lab capabilities to allow hospitals to more easily communicate with outside labs and diagnostic companies…
The change would affect Epic's Orders and Results Anywhere tool…”