About Healthcare Quality and Safety
ECRI’s Top 10 Health Technology Hazards for 2024
“1. Medical Devices May Pose Usability Challenges for Home Users, Risking Misuse and Patient Harm
2. Inadequate or Onerous Device Cleaning Instructions Endanger Patients
3. Sterile Drug Compounding without the Use of Technological Safeguards Increases the Risk of Medication Errors
4. Overlooked Environmental Impacts of Patient Care Endanger Public Health
5. Insufficient Governance of AI Used in Medical Technologies Risks Inappropriate Care Decisions
6. Ransomware Targeting the Healthcare Sector Remains a Critical Threat
7. Increased Burn Risk with Single-Foil Electrosurgical Return Electrodes
8. Infusion Pump Damage Remains a Medication Safety Concern
9. Poor QC of Implantable Orthopedic Products Can Lead to Surgical Delays and Patient Harm
10. Third-Party Web Analytics Software Can Compromise Patient Confidentiality”
Comment: It is interesting to follow this list over the years and see how it changes. Check out them out at www.ecri.org.
About health insurance/insurers
Medicare Advantage: A Policy Primer An excellent monograph from The Commonwealth Fund.
2025 Medicare Advantage and Part D Advance Notice Fact Sheet While there are a number of changes, the expected average change in revenue for MA plans is + 3.70%.
Few Americans Know How Much Their Healthcare Costs “Seventeen percent of U.S. adults report they know how much their healthcare products or services will cost before receiving them. Results are similar across key demographic groups, including by race/ethnicity, gender, age, education level, geographic region and health insurance coverage status, suggesting a societywide lack of awareness about one’s healthcare costs, regardless of personal background.”
Cigna's Medicare sale 'clears path' for M&A “Cigna's plan to sell its Medicare business to Health Care Service Corp. is clearing a path for future mergers and acquisitions, according to S&P analysts.
The company's Medicare segment ‘just didn't have that scale relative to where they needed to be and the margins didn't line up,’ S&P Global Ratings analyst Francesca Mannarino wrote Jan. 31. ‘So divesting this business could potentially set themselves up for future opportunity.’”
About hospitals and healthcare systems
JANUARY 2024 National Hospital Flash Report “Key Takeaways
1. Margins improved in December and are up by more than 15% compared to 2022, which marked the worst year since the beginning of the pandemic. Hospitals are experiencing general improvement across operational and financial measures.
2. Average length of stay has declined on a year-over-year basis. This continued stabilization reflects the ongoing effort by hospitals and health systems to have clear pathways for discharge. Despite current signs of improvement, acuity and average length of stay will likely rise in the long term as more lower-acuity care is shifted outside the hospital.
3. Outpatient revenue has grown significantly—increasing by more than 40% compared to 2020. This growth is being driven by the shift towards outpatient care settings due to reimbursement changes, patient preference, increased ability for care to be delivered in these settings, and further digitization.”
About pharma
Addendum to yesterday’s Biogen story about abandoning Aduhelm. The company will focus instead on Leqembi, an Alzheimer’s drug it developed with Japanese partner Eisai.
Deal hungry Merck plans more phase 3 launches than in 2023 “After more than 20 phase 3 trials got underway in 2023, Merck is planning for even more this year, according to Dean Li, Ph.D., head of Merck Research Labs, on Thursday. Meanwhile, CEO Rob Davis says the company is hunting for more mid-sized deals.
Three new assets entered phase 3 trials in the fourth quarter, all three of which came from business development. MK-1022 is the most recent, coming over in Merck’s multi-billion dollar deal with Daiichi Sankyo announced in the fall. Candidates stemming from Merck’s licensing deal with Kelun and 2022 acquisition of Imago also entered phase 3 studies.”
The FTC Is Attacking Drugmakers’ ‘Patent Thickets’ “The Federal Trade Commission has challenged the validity of over 100 drug product patents, focusing on devices used to deliver medicines, like inhalers and autoinjectors, in an effort to increase competition and potentially lower some prices.
The FTC says drugmakers illegitimately use the patents to prevent competitors from offering cheaper generic alternatives.
It’s the first time the FTC has tried the tactic, said Hannah Garden-Monheit, director of the FTC’s Office of Policy Planning.”
About the public’s health
Updated Covid vaccine has 54% effectiveness, new data suggest “New data released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest that the most recent Covid-19 booster offers about 54% percent protection against infection with the virus.
A study published in the CDC’s online journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report showed that the updated vaccine was essentially equally effective at protecting against the strain targeted by the vaccine — called XBB.1.5 — and the JN.1 subvariant, which emerged after the vaccine was made. JN.1 is currently the dominant virus circulating in the United States.”
About healthcare IT
2023 CAQH Index Report “ Data from the 2023 CAQH Index found that $89 billion (approximately 22 percent), is spent conducting administrative transactions tracked by the CAQH Index. Of the $89 billion, the industry can save $18.3 billion by transitioning to fully electronic transactions. This cost savings opportunity comprises roughly five percent of the cost of administrative complexity in the U.S. healthcare system.”
About healthcare personnel
Is the nation’s primary care shortage as bad as federal data suggest? An excellent article on this topic from The Washington Post.
The No. 1 problem still keeping hospital CEOs up at night “Hospital CEOs ranked workforce challenges as their No. 1 concern in 2023. Financial challenges, which held the top spot for 16 consecutive years prior to 2021, were listed the second-most pressing concern in the American College of Healthcare Executives' annual survey. Behavioral health and addiction issues ranked third.”