About health insurance/insurers
Facing industry pushback, Joint Commission plans to introduce proposed sustainability measures as optional “After receiving industry feedback on new proposed standards on sustainability, the Joint Commission currently plans to roll them out as optional, Fierce Healthcare has learned.
The accreditation standards, aimed at those participating in the hospital and critical access hospital accreditation programs, would require hospitals to designate a person responsible for overseeing the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, measure specific data, develop goals and action plans to reduce those emissions and annually track progress.
In a virtual meeting on decarbonizing the sector hosted by the National Academy of Medicine on Thursday, the commission’s president and CEO Jonathan Perlin, M.D., Ph.D., presented the organization's plan. The proposal remains in an open comment period, which ends next week.”
About hospitals and healthcare systems
West Virginia systems to form 4-hospital academic system “West Virginia may gain a larger academic health system through the combination of Huntington-based Mountain Health Network, Marshall Health and Marshall University, which have signed a letter of intent to combine.
The governing boards for each party voted unanimously the week of April 24 to authorize a letter of intent to form an integrated academic health system with the Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine, the medical school of public Marshall University.”
Comment: Let’s see what the FTC says about this consolidation.
About pharma
Talcum powder cancer claims target J&J’s new consumer carve-out The talc suit liability will fall to the new consumer product spinoff, Kenvue, which is still planning its IPO.
The first Humira biosim is doing Amgen more harm than good—for now “The U.S. launch of a biosimilar to AbbVie’s Humira appears to be hurting the copycat’s developer itself.
After AbbVie reported a Humira U.S. sales decline of 26% in the first quarter, Amgen said its rival TNF blocker Enbrel suffered an even bigger loss.
Enbrel’s U.S. sales slid 33% in the first quarter compared with the same period last year, falling to $564 million. The drug’s sales haul was 29% smaller than Wall Street had expected.”
Comparison of Research Spending on New Drug Approvals by the National Institutes of Health vs the Pharmaceutical Industry, 2010-2019 “The results of this cross-sectional study found that NIH investment in drugs approved from 2010 to 2019 was not less than investment by the pharmaceutical industry, with comparable accounting for basic and applied research, failed clinical trials, and cost of capital or discount rates. The relative scale of NIH and industry investment may provide a cost basis for calibrating the balance of social and private returns from investments in pharmaceutical innovation.”
About the public’s health
FDA approves Pfizer's Prevnar 20 for infants, children “Pfizer announced that the FDA has okayed expanded use of the company's Prevnar 20 vaccine to include infants and children. Specifically, the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine is now approved to prevent invasive pneumococcal disease caused by 20 Streptococcus pneumoniae serotypes in infants and children ages six weeks through 17 years, as well as to prevent otitis media in infants six weeks through five years of age caused by the original seven serotypes contained in Prevnar.”
Popular keto and paleo diets aren’t helping your heart, report says “Ketogenic and paleo diets may be trendy, but they won’t do your heart any favors.
That’s the conclusion of a report from the American Heart Association, which analyzed many of the most popular diets and ranked them based on which approaches to eating are best and worst for your heart.
The authors said one of the purposes of their report was to counter widespread misinformation about nutrition promoted by diet books, blogs and people on TikTok, Instagram and Twitter — where posts promoting keto and paleo eating plans have surged in recent years…
The DASH diet and three others with high scores were grouped into what the heart association called Tier 1. The others in the Tier 1 group included the pescatarian diet (92 points), the Mediterranean diet (89 points) and the vegetarian diet (86 points).”
Interactive Quarterly Early Release Estimates FYI- interactive site from the CDC that provides longitudinal data about health conditions, health behavior, insurance status, and more.
The Health Costs of Gun Violence: How the U.S. Compares to Other Countries “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that nearly 49,000 Americans died from firearm-related causes in 2021, up from about 45,000 in 2020.1 In 2019, firearms accounted for 10.4 deaths for every 100,000 people in the U.S., around five times greater than in the countries with the second- and third-highest death rates, France (2.2) and Switzerland (2.1).
Less publicized, however, is how gun violence burdens the health care system. Each year in the U.S., firearm-related injuries lead to roughly 30,000 inpatient hospital stays and 50,000 emergency room visits, generating more than $1 billion in initial medical costs. In 2020 alone, deaths from these injuries cost $290 million, an average of $6,400 per patient. Medicaid and other public insurance programs absorbed most of these costs.”
The World Health Organization on Its 75th Anniversary A really good review.
HHS Awards $147 Million to Support Ending the HIV Epidemic in the United States Yesterday, “the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), awarded more than $147 million to 49 recipients to advance the Ending the HIV Epidemic in the U.S. (EHE) initiative, which is part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s ongoing efforts to reduce the number of new HIV infections in the United States by at least 90 percent by 2030. This funding will help states and metropolitan areas with the highest levels of HIV transmission link people with HIV to essential care, support, and treatment, as well as support training and other resources for these jurisdictions.”
About healthcare IT
Washington becomes first state to adopt health data protections post-Roe “The ‘My Health, My Data Act’ will require search engines and health trackers to add more privacy disclosures for consumers when they’re handling their sensitive health data, and it will require companies to get authorization in plain language from customers before they sell such data. It also gives Washington residents the new rights to force a company to delete their health data.
Data processors will have to comply with the law by March 31, 2024, though small businesses will have several additional months to come into compliance.”
About healthcare personnel
Behind Optum's physician acquisition strategy “UnitedHealth Group's Optum, parent company of ASC chain SCA Health, is on a spending spree, scooping up physician groups and expanding its portfolio.
The company is now affiliated with more than 70,000 physicians, making it the largest employer of physicians in the country.”