About health insurance/insurers
US employers expect nearly 6% spike in health insurance costs in 2025, Mercer says “U.S. employers expect health insurance costs to rise an average 5.8% in 2025, largely due to increased cost of medical services as well as higher use, according to a survey released by consulting firm Mercer on Thursday.
The year 2025 is projected to be the third consecutive year in which healthcare costs for employers rise by more than 5%. Costs increased an average 3% during the decade prior, the report said.”
About hospitals and healthcare systems
New Analysis Shows Hospitals Improving Performance on Key Patient Safety Measures Surpassing Pre-pandemic Levels “Key Takeaways
Despite being sicker and more complex, hospitalized patients in the first quarter of 2024 were on average over 20% more likely to survive than expected given the severity of their illnesses compared to the fourth quarter of 2019.
Based on Vizient’s analysis, the AHA using national hospitalization data projects that while caring for sicker patients, hospitals’ efforts to improve safety led to 200,000 Americans hospitalized between April 2023 and March 2024 surviving episodes of care they wouldn’t have in 2019.
Hospitals cared for more patients overall in the first quarter of 2024 than in the last quarter of 2019, including providing care to a sicker, more complex patient population.
Hospitals’ central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI) and catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI) in the first quarter of 2024 were at rates lower than those recorded in the fourth quarter of 2019.
Not only did multiple key preventive health screenings rapidly rebound to pre-pandemic levels, but ongoing improvement has led to a 60%-to-80% increase in breast, colon and cervical cancer screenings in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the fourth quarter 2019.”
About pharma
Walgreens pays $107M over prescription billing fraud claim “Walgreens Boots Alliance has agreed to pay a $106.8 million fine to the U.S. Department of Justice to settle allegations that it billed government health care programs for prescriptions never dispensed.”
About the public’s health
New CDC Data Show Adult Obesity Prevalence Remains High “New CDC population data from 2023 show that in 23 states more than one in three adults (35%) has obesity. Before 2013, no state had an adult obesity prevalence at or above 35%. Currently, at least one in five adults (20%) in each U.S. state is living with obesity.”
The 12 Cinnamon Powders You Should Never Use “12 of the 36 products measured above 1 part per million of lead—the threshold that triggers a recall in New York, the only state in the U.S. that regulates heavy metals in spices.”
Twice-a-year injection reduced risk of HIV infection by 96%, drug company says — more than daily PrEP pill “In a Phase 3 clinical trial, 99.9% of participants who took a twice-a-year injection of lenacapavir for HIV prevention did not acquire an infection, according to data from drugmaker Gilead Sciences.”
Many Americans Wary of Vaccines as Fall Flu, COVID Season Looms: Survey “More than one-third of those polled (37%) said they’d gotten vaccines in the past but don’t plan to this year, according to results from a nationwide Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center survey.
Just a slight majority -- 56% -- plan to get the flu shot this fall, researchers found.
Less than half (43%) say they’ll get the updated COVID vaccine.”
About healthcare IT
EHR Interoperability 2024 “Regardless of EHR vendor, interoperability is a major pain point for clinicians amid an already painful EHR experience. Among the 11 metrics used to calculate the Net EHR Experience Survey (NEES), clinicians are least satisfied with external integration—only 44% of respondents agree their EHR provides expected integration with outside organizations. In particular, physicians most frequently cite interoperability as a challenge and report that it is their top fix request, noting that external patient data often isn’t readily available in their EHR and, if found, is difficult to leverage (see next section). Of all clinical backgrounds measured by the Arch Collaborative, physicians have the lowest average NEES—22 points lower (on a -100 to 100 point scale) than the average NEES of other clinician types.”
The results haven’t varied significantly since 2018.
About health technology
FDA authorizes first OTC hearing aid software to be used in Apple's AirPods Pro “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday authorized the first over-the-counter hearing aid software that is intended to be used with compatible versions of the Apple AirPods Pro headphones.”