About healthcare quality
The Joint Commission eliminates additional 200 standards across all accreditation programs See the announcement for a list of the second tranche of deleted and consolidated elements of performance (EPs).
About health insurance/insurers
Drivers of 2024 Health Insurance Premium Changes From the Academy of Actuaries: “Key Points
Although Medicaid eligibility redeterminations due to the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) will likely result in an increase in individual health insurance market enrollment,
the impact on the risk pool and premiums is uncertain.Inflation and other factors will increase negotiated provider payment rates and will increase premiums.
Shifting payment responsibility for COVID-19 vaccines and tests from the federal government to carriers could increase premiums, potentially offset by reduced carrier coverage of at-home tests.
A continued shift of small groups from fully insured plans to other funding arrangements such as self-funded or level-funded plans could put upward pressure on small group premiums.
Premium changes will reflect local market dynamics and vary by carrier and by area.”
Realigning Reality With Intent in Funding Safety-Net Hospitals A thoughtful explanation of the problems as well as proposed solutions.
Biden administration asks employers to give more help to workers who lose Medicaid The headline is the story.
About hospitals and healthcare systems
Fifth Semi-Annual Hospital Price Transparency Compliance Report July 2023 “Our latest review, conducted two and a half years after the Hospital Price Transparency Rule took effect, analyzed the websites of 2,000 U.S. hospitals and found only 36% of them (721) to be fully compliant with all requirements of the rule. Although the majority of hospitals have posted files, the widescale noncompliance of 64% of hospitals is due to most hospitals’ files being incomplete or not having prices clearly associated with both payer and plan. In this report, 69 of the hospitals reviewed had no usable standard charges file.”
In a related article: CMS PLANS TO CRACK DOWN ON PRICE TRANSPARENCY COMPLIANCE IN 2024
CHS EBITDA dips 18.1% amid labor, payer challenges “Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems, the third-largest for-profit system, saw its EBITDA fall by 18.1 percent to $335 million in the first quarter as salaries and benefits as a share of revenue increased by 1.3 percentage points, according to Moody's "Healthcare Quarterly" report, published July 19.
A significant portion of CHS' business is in rural areas, potentially driving up costs to recruit and retain staff, according to the report. An unfavorable payer mix in these areas may also be a contributing factor.
However, the two largest for-profit systems — Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Healthcare and Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare — saw improved EBITDA in the first quarter as salary and benefit obligations softened.”
About pharma
Tornado damage to Pfizer plant will probably create long-term shortages of some drugs hospitals need “Wednesday’s tornado touched down near Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and ripped up the roof of a Pfizer factory that makes nearly 25% of Pfizer’s sterile injectable medicines used in U.S. hospitals, according to the drugmaker.”
About the public’s health
Global, regional, and national burden of diabetes from 1990 to 2021, with projections of prevalence to 2050: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021 “In 2021, there were 529 million (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 500–564) people living with diabetes worldwide, and the global age-standardised total diabetes prevalence was 6·1% (5·8–6·5). At the super-region level, the highest age-standardised rates were observed in north Africa and the Middle East (9·3% [8·7–9·9]) and, at the regional level, in Oceania (12·3% [11·5–13·0])…By 2050, more than 1·31 billion (1·22–1·39) people are projected to have diabetes.”
White House Launches Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response PolicyFrom The White House: “As part of the President’s commitment to ensure that our country is more prepared for a pandemic than we were when he took office, the Administration is standing up the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy (OPPR). This will be a permanent office in the Executive Office of the President (EOP) charged with leading, coordinating, and implementing actions related to preparedness for, and response to, known and unknown biological threats or pathogens that could lead to a pandemic or to significant public health-related disruptions in the United States. OPPR will take over the duties of the current COVID-19 Response Team and Mpox Team at the White House and will continue to coordinate and develop policies and priorities related to pandemic preparedness and response.”
About healthcare IT
From the Office of Civil Rights Copy of a letter warning healthcare entities: “The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are writing to draw your attention to serious privacy and security risks related to the use of online tracking technologies that may be present on your website or mobile application (app) and impermissibly disclosing consumers’ sensitive personal health information to third parties.
Recent research, news reports, FTC enforcement actions, and an OCR bulletin have highlighted risks and concerns about the use of technologies, such as the Meta/Facebook pixel and Google Analytics, that can track a user’s online activities. These tracking technologies gather identifiable information about users as they interact with a website or mobile app, often in ways which are not avoidable by and largely unknown to users.”