Weekly Spotlight
Stay tuned for more detailed analysis of the physician payment rules. Today we’re taking a moment to return volley on original reporting from John Wilkerson at STAT on how “The effort to reform physician pay is set to pit primary care docs against highly paid specialists.” In the article, Wilkerson quotes intrepid startup blogger “Courtney Savage, founder of Savage Health Policy.” For more information and less self promotion, head on over to STAT!
#Provider
Other Regulatory News
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)
MedPAC releases 2024 Data Book
MedPAC Data Book on health care spending and the Medicare program
#All
Here come Medicare’s first negotiated drug prices
CMS is due to publish the negotiated price list on September 1 but rumors suggest the timing may run a bit closer to the democratic convention.
#Drug, #Patient
AHA urges CMS to reconsider proposed organ transplant access model
The American Hospital Association is urging CMS not to implement a proposed mandatory payment model meant to increase access to organ transplants, saying it is constructed in a way that may exacerbate inequalities and add “unnecessary disruption” to the transplant ecosystem.
#Hospital
CMS Releases Final Part Two Guidance to Help People with Medicare Prescription Drug Coverage Manage Prescription Drug Costs
CMS is releasing the final part two guidance regarding plan outreach and education for the Medicare Prescription Payment Plan, which aims to ensure that people with Medicare prescription drug coverage are aware of the payment option. Starting in 2025, the Medicare Prescription Payment Plan provides the option to people with Medicare prescription drug coverage to spread the costs of their prescription drugs over the calendar year rather than paying in full at the pharmacy counter each time they fill a prescription
#Patient, #Drug
Maternal health providers are wary of CMS’ obstetric proposals
Maternal health advocates say CMS’ standards could lay out a starting point for improvement, but providers are worried the agency’s focus on quality collaboratives could lead to a set of standards that are far from uniform.
#Patient, Provider
CMS DINGS AETNA FOR SURPRISE BILLING MISTAKES
CMS released an audit Aetna’s compliance with the No Surprises Act.
#Payer, Provider, Patient
CMS floats proposals to boost Medicare ACOs
The Medicare pay cut looming for doctors next year comes with a sweetener for providers that participate in Medicare Shared Savings Program accountable care organizations.
#Provider
Opinion: Why Has Medicare’s Innovation Center Failed?
Opinion from Chris Pope, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute
#Provider
Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
CDRH Announces Reorganization of Several Offices to Increase Organizational Agility and Advance Public Health Mission
CDRH announced new organizational changes to “help strengthen and better position the Center to protect and promote the public health.”
#Device
Health and Human Services (HHS)
New Report: Is Everything Health Care? Evaluating Social Determinants of Health (SDOH)
According to a new report from the Manhattan Institute, the Biden administration’s recently published The U.S. Playbook to Address Social Determinants of Health cites extensive research to argue that increasing public spending on housing, education, food, and neighborhood environments will often pay for itself by reducing health care costs. These non-medical factors are called social determinants of health (SDOH), but the bulk of SDOH research is substandard and does not appropriately disentangle causation from correlation.
#All
Hospitals eye graduate medical education in post-Chevron lawsuit
Hospitals belonging to the UNC Health, UChicago Medicine and Yale New Haven Health systems sued Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, alleging the federal government underpaid hospitals for graduate medical education under an allegedly flawed reimbursement calculation.
#Provider
Hill Happenings
A Senate bill was touted as a cure for ‘patent thickets.’ Some say the drug industry watered it down
A bill to restrict two pharmaceutical manufacturer market tactics is drawing attention. The goal of the legislation was to make it more difficult for brand-name companies to assert rights to countless patents on a medicine in order to delay competition from lower-cost generic versions of their medicines.
#Drug
Notable Notes
Chevron Healthcare Roundup
Republicans who support the PBM bills and cheered the Supreme Court rulings see the FTC’s recent actions as another reason for Congress to step in — especially since the Supreme Court just made it harder for agencies like the FTC to follow their own paths.
#All
Modern Healthcare explores Chevron healthcare implications.
#All
McDermott+ analysis tackles what comes next post-Chevron
#All
Cardiology News
Taking a page from the physics of bird flight, researchers are trying to develop a passive flow-controlled, self-cleaning TAVR valve to inhibit valve thrombosis and improve valve performance
#Device, #Patient
Researchers made a case for failure to rescue (FTR) as a potential quality metric in percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), using records from a large nationwide registry.
#Provider
After getting a transvenous implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, patients were several times more likely to develop tricuspid regurgitation than those who got a subcutaneous device, according to post hoc analysis of a randomized trial.
#Patient
Most early-career cardiologists received some industry payments — those in procedural subspecialties got a median $1,801 in their last year of fellowship and $1,112 annually after a few years out of training.
#Provider
Cancer News
Donald Trump promised cures for cancer and other diseases when he accepted his party’s presidential nomination Thursday night at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
#Patient, #Drug, #Device
A cancer care navigation startup has raised $95 million from prominent tech investors to help payers and providers spend less on cancer patients while improving their health — including by doling out incentive payments to providers and keeping a cut of insurers’ savings.
#Patient, #Payer, #Provider
Healthcare Workforce
Increased salary stipends and/or housing stipends were the most concretely identified benefits of unionization of residency programs. However, unintended consequences of unionization were the irrelevance of certain negotiated benefits, paradoxical losses of surgery department-provided benefits, and framing of resident-faculty relationships as adversarial.
#Provider
Since the Federal Trade Commission proposed the noncompete ban, some physicians have refused to sign employment contracts that include those clauses.
#Provider
Microsoft global outage forces health systems to cancel appointments, delay procedures
On Thursday, a widespread outage to Microsoft systems took down computers in health systems around the globe, leading many to cancel non-urgent medical appointments and surgeries as they encouraged patients to make plans for disrupted travel and delays in care.
#All
Why Covid is surging this summer — and what health experts say has changed
Even as SARS-CoV-2 has joined the ranks of the respiratory viruses that will continue circulating and causing infections, a spike in cases like this summer’s still causes disruptions in people’s lives — as well as some confusion over issues like tracking down tests, the best time to get vaccine boosters, and the latest advice on managing the infection.
#All
IRBs fail to assess trials’ scientific merit, putting participants at risk
IRBs are supposed to protect trial participants’ interests by assessing a trial’s scientific merit, as described in the trial’s protocol. However, according to a recent study, many IRBs routinely ignore the legal requirement to assess scientific merit, giving clinical trials a stamp of ethical approval without this essential assessment.
#All
Novel Program Helps People With HIV Manage Chronic Pain
A novel behavioral pain management program reduced pain severity and pain-related functional interference in people living with HIV, according to a randomized clinical trial. The Skills to Manage Pain (STOMP) program was associated with a mean difference of -1.25 in the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI) total score (scale of 0-10) when compared with enhanced usual care (P<0.001),
#Patient
Urban Institute Tool Shows Impact of New Rules on Medical Debt
Starting in 2022, the three nationwide credit reporting companies made significant changes to medical debt reporting. These changes helped cut the number of Americans with medical debt in collections in half and improve credit scores. But, 15 million Americans still have medical debt in collections, and most debt balances remain on credit reports.
#Patient
Commonwealth Fund 2024 State Scorecard on Women’s Health and Reproductive Care
Deaths from preventable causes are on the rise and deep inequities persist, leading to stark racial differences in maternal mortality and deaths from breast and cervical cancers. Despite a small rebound in women’s life expectancy in 2022, it remains at its lowest since 2006.1
#Patient
