About Covid-19
Oral Fluvoxamine With Inhaled Budesonide for Treatment of Early-Onset COVID-19 “Treatment with oral fluvoxamine plus inhaled budesonide among high-risk outpatients with early COVID-19 reduced the incidence of severe disease requiring advanced care.”
About hospitals and healthcare systems
Hospital expenses per inpatient day across 50 states FYI.
About pharma
Narcan manufacturer aims to price over-the-counter kit under $50 “The manufacturer of Narcan, the overdose reversal medication that received over-the-counter status last month, says it aims to price a two-pack of the medication at less than $50.
In a statement Thursday, Emergent BioSolutions said it will take ‘a responsible approach to pricing’ as Narcan becomes available over the counter.”
After Pandemic Delays, FDA Still Struggling to Inspect Foreign Drug Manufacturers “A ProPublica analysis of FDA inspection data as of April shows that the agency’s inspections of overseas drug manufacturers, located mostly in India and China, has dropped precipitously even as the number of manufacturers has remained relatively steady. In fiscal year 2019, the year before the COVID-19 pandemic limited travel and movement, the FDA inspected 37% of the nearly 2,500 overseas manufacturers; in 2022, the agency only inspected 6% of around 2,800. And in India, where the contaminated eyedrops originated, the FDA inspected only 3% of manufacturers in 2022 — significantly less than in 2019, when 45% of plants were inspected.”
About the public’s health
The “State of the Air” 2023 “…after decades of progress on cleaning up sources of air pollution, nearly 36% of Americans—119.6 million people—still live in places with failing grades for unhealthy levels of ozone or particle pollution. Overall, this is 17.6 million fewer people breathing unhealthy air compared to last year’s report. The improvement was seen in falling levels of ozone in many places around the country, the continuation of a positive trend that reflects the success of the Clean Air Act. However, the number of people living in counties with failing grades for daily spikes in deadly particle pollution was 63.7 million, the most ever reported under the current national standard.”
Race and Ethnicity–Adjusted Age Recommendation for Initiating Breast Cancer Screening “Findings This cross-sectional study was conducted among the total 415 277 breast cancer deaths in female patients in the US from 2011 to 2020. Study findings suggested that when breast cancer screening was recommended to start at age 50 years for the general female population, Black females should start screening 8 years earlier, at age 42 years, whereas White females could start at age 51 years, American Indian or Alaska Native and Hispanic females at age 57 years, and Asian or Pacific Islander females at age 61 years.
Meaning These findings suggest that health policy makers and clinicians could consider an alternative, race and ethnicity–adapted approach in which Black female patients start screening earlier.”
About healthcare IT
Generative AI’s three possibly insurmountable challenges for health care Well worth reading. The challenges fall in three categories: The truth challenge (accuracy); The time challenge (“That is, new AI systems are mostly sold based on the extent to which they make care faster or cheaper, not more pleasant for provider and patient.”); and The thought challenge (“When doctors no longer engage directly with clinical notes, an active thinking process is replaced with passively waiting for alerts. But as reliance on alerts increases, alert fatigue sets in as doctors stop paying attention to those alerts.”)
With these problems in mind, also read: Augmedix Announces Partnership with HCA Healthcare to Accelerate the Development of AI-enabled Ambient Documentation
About healthcare personnel
Surge in medical liability premiums increases reaches fourth year “A protracted period of upward volatility in medical liability premiums has extended into a fourth consecutive year and suggests a hard insurance market has spread across many states making it difficult for physicians to find affordable coverage, according to an analysis (PDF) issued today by the American Medical Association (AMA)….
[For examples]:Fifteen states reported double-digit percentage increases in premiums in 2022, up from 12 in 2021. As in 2021, Illinois leads the latest list of states with the largest proportion (63.6%) of premiums that increased 10% or more, followed by New Mexico (33.3%), Oregon (26.7%), Kansas (20%), South Dakota (20%), Kentucky (20%), Massachusetts (16.7%), Montana (16.7%), Missouri (14.8%), South Carolina (11.1%), West Virginia (6.7%), Maine (6.7%), Virginia (6.4%), Nevada (5.6%), and Georgia (4.8%). The size of the largest premium increase in these states ranged from 10% in Maine and Montana to 40.9% in Kansas.
The AMA analysis also found striking differences in premiums by geography. For example, in 2022 some obstetricians and gynecologists faced base premiums ranging from $49,804 in Los Angeles County, California to $226,224 in Miami-Dade County, Florida.”
This issue was a “sleeper” during the pandemic, but now, such high rates will force physicians to move to states with lower rates, sell practices to health systems or retire early. But reform will probably never come unless there is a severe crisis, as the trial lawyers contribute very heavily to political campaigns.