About health insurance/insurers
MSSP ACOs save Medicare $2.1B in 2023, the largest savings in program history “Accountable care organizations saved Medicare $2.1 billion, the largest yearly savings in program history, in 2023, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) revealed Tuesday.
The results come from the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP), which saved a net $1.8 billion in 2022, at the time the second-highest annual savings.”
What 10 Medicare Advantage insurers earn from health risk assessments FYI
.Humana updates guidance as it beats on revenue, profit in Q3 “The company said in the second quarter that it anticipated full-year earnings per share of ‘approximately $16’ but now expects ‘at least $16,’ a slight bump amid a year of significant challenges in the Medicare Advantage space. Humana also reaffirmed that it expects a full-year medical loss ratio of about 90%, according to its earnings report released Wednesday.”
Mike Johnson vows major changes to Affordable Care Act if Trump wins election ““No Obamacare?” an attendee asked the speaker, invoking the term popularized by Republicans to describe the health law.
’No Obamacare,’ Johnson responded. ‘The ACA is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work, and we got a lot of ideas on how to do that.’”
About hospitals and healthcare systems
Hospital service prices have surged at twice the rate of inflation since 2000 “Hospital service prices increased by more than 220% between 2000 and 2022, which was more than twice the rate of inflation and that of other medical services. “
About the public’s health
Extreme heat set records for health perils in 2023 “Heat-related deaths last year in people over age 65 increased by 167% globally above levels seen in the 1990s — nearly three times more than what would have been expected if temperatures had not changed.
People were also exposed to an average of 1,512 hours of high temperatures that posed at least a moderate risk of heat stress when doing light exercise such as walking or cycling — a 27.7% increase on the 1990-1999 yearly average.
Conditions were ripe for the spread of more deadly mosquito-borne infectious diseases, with dengue cases reaching an all-time high of over 5 million infections reported in more than 80 countries and territories in 2023.
On a more positive note, the report found deaths from fossil fuel-derived air pollution fell almost 7% from 2016 to 2021, with most of this decline due to efforts to reduce pollution from coal burning.”
Discrimination may cause gut inflammation, digestive woes, study says “Discrimination -- prejudiced actions toward people based on their identity -- may cause stress that impairs gut health and lead to the growth of unhealthy bacteria that promote inflammation, a new study has found.
The study was published… in Frontiers in Microbiology.”
WHO report shows global tuberculosis cases are rising “Tuberculosis (TB) is on the rise and has once again overtaken COVID-19 as the world's leading infectious disease killer, according to the latest report from the World Health Organization (WHO).
The Global Tuberculosis Report 2024, released today, shows 8.2 million people were newly diagnosed with TB in 2023, a figure that represents the highest number of TB cases recorded by the WHO since it began global TB monitoring in 1995. It also marks a significant increase from the 7.5 million new TB cases reported in 2022.”
Comparing Deaths from Gun Violence in the U.S. with Other Countries “Highlights
Globally, the U.S. ranks at the 93rd percentile for overall firearm mortality, 92nd percentile for children and teens, and 96th percentile for women.
The U.S. has among the highest overall firearm mortality rates, as well as among the highest firearm mortality rates for children, adolescents, and women, both globally and among high-income countries.
Nearly all U.S. states have a higher firearm mortality rate than most other countries. Death rates due to physical violence by firearm in U.S. states are closer to rates seen in countries experiencing active conflict.
Black and American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) people have the highest firearm mortality rates of any racial or ethnic group. “
About healthcare IT
Large Language Model Influence on Diagnostic Reasoning “In a randomized clinical trial including 50 physicians, the use of an LLM did not significantly enhance diagnostic reasoning performance compared with the availability of only conventional resources.”
About healthcare personnel
A quiet driver of the nurse shortage, explained “In a nutshell, the average age of nursing faculty is between 48.6 and 62.5 years old, and one-third of nursing faculty who teach are expected to retire by 2025. Add in the stress of COVID-19 and the lack of clinical opportunities during that time, and a crisis is intensifying.
In surveys conducted by nurse organizations, nurse faculty cite these three things as reasons not to teach:
Salary gap. Educators in the field are required to have advanced degrees yet typically take pay cuts of as much as $40,000 when leaving clinical practice to teach full-time.
Burnout left over from the pandemic. One academic study showed the highest contributing factor to burnout for nurse educators is high workload levels and lack of work-life balance.
Requirement for doctoral degrees. Experienced nurses may be reluctant to invest additional years and resources into advanced education while simultaneously accepting lower compensation.
Compounding the problem is it is proving difficult to find new faculty to replace the large number of Baby Boomers retiring.”
About health technology
37 best healthcare inventions of '24, per Time FYI. This article is a curated healthcare list from all categories in a Time report of best inventions of 2024.
National Academies calls to change how biomedical research uses race and ethnicity “Race and ethnicity are applied in inappropriate and even harmful ways in biomedical research, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine said in a report issued Wednesday, calling on scientists, research funders, and publishers to transform the way they use — and don’t use — the categories in research.”