What to expect in US healthcare in 2024 and beyond A nice summary of projections from McKinsey.
About Covid-19
COVID, flu admissions fall: 4 virus updates Respiratory virus season's burden on the healthcare system may begin to ease after weeks of crowded emergency departments and hospital strain, the latest data suggests.
In the second week of January, COVID-19 admissions fell nearly 10%, though more than 32,000 people with the virus were still admitted to U.S. hospitals, CDC data shows. The drop comes after nine straight weeks of increases…
Flu admissions fell for the second week straight, with 14,874 lab-confirmed flu patients hospitalized during the week ending Jan. 13. However, experts have been hesitant to call this a trend since cases typically rise again later in the winter months.
About hospitals and healthcare systems
Intermountain ends precision medicine program “Intermountain Health will end and divest its Precision Genomics Laboratory Feb. 1.
The 33-hospital system introduced Intermountain Precision Genomics in 2014. ‘Over the past 10 years, the precision medicine market has rapidly evolved, new partners have entered, and this work has become financially unsustainable,’ the nonprofit health system said.”
Comment: As hospitals (which serve “local” markets) diversify their services, commercial competition from national companies can cause these projects to become “financially unsustainable.”
New York Is Planning to Shutter a Major Brooklyn Teaching Hospital “The state is planning to drastically shrink or even close University Hospital at Downstate in Brooklyn, the only state-run medical hospital in New York City.
A number of concerns — too few patients, annual operating deficits of about $100 million and a deteriorating hospital building — have led to the proposal, which hospital administrators shared with doctors this week.
It is unclear how the plan will affect access to medical care for residents of central Brooklyn and beyond.”
About health insurance/payers
Payers ranked by Medicare Advantage enrollment in 2024 As the final open enrollment numbers are in, United, Humana and CVS take the top 3 slots, respectively.
About pharma
2023's top 10 clinical trial flops FYI
About healthcare IT
United States Core Data for Interoperability “The United States Core Data for Interoperability (USCDI) is a standardized set of data elements for nationwide, interoperable health information exchange. USCDI establishes a baseline set of data that can be commonly exchanged across care settings for a wide range of uses. USCDI version 1 (USCDI v1) was adopted as a standard (at 45 CFR 170.213) in the 21st Century Cures Act: Interoperability, Information Blocking, and the ONC Health IT Certification Program (Cures Act Final Rule). Since then, ONC has released three more versions of USCDI for which two have been approved under the ONC StandardsVersion Advancement Process (SVAP). The SVAP permits health IT developers with health IT products certified under the ONC Health IT Certification Program (Certification Program) to voluntarily update their conformance to newer versions of adopted standards as part of the “Real World Testing” Condition and Maintenance of Certification requirement (§ 170.405).”
Comment: See the graphics starting on Page 7.