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Read today’s Kaiser Health News
In other news:
Live updates: House passes GOP megabill and sends it to Trump; Hakeem Jeffries delays final vote with marathon speech
See, also: House Passes Sweeping Bill to Fulfill President’s Domestic Agenda
Lucian Leape, Whose Work Spurred Patient Safety in Medicine, Dies at 94: Dr. Leape’s investigations into medical errors planted the seeds for patient safety programs that are in place today across the globe and that have saved thousands of lives. Despite resistance from the medical establishment, he found systemic ways to reduce errors, paving the way for a global standard. Thousands of lives have been saved.
About health insurance/insurers
Enrollment in Dual-Eligible Special Needs Plans and Disenrollment Rates: Question Is enrollment in Medicare Advantage plans with greater degrees of integration associated with lower plan disenrollment rates?
Findings In this cross-sectional study of 2.7 million dually eligible Medicare beneficiaries, dually eligible Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries enrolled in fully integrated dual-eligible special needs plans had substantially lower disenrollment rates compared with beneficiaries enrolled in other Medicare Advantage plan types.
Meaning The study results suggest that fully integrated plans retained their members at higher rates, which could be a sign of improved care experiences.
About hospitals and healthcare systems
Simulating the Overall Hospital Quality Star Ratings With Random Measure Weights: Question Can a measure of reliable excellence in hospital quality be developed from simulating the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Overall Hospital Quality Star Rating summary score using random measure weights?
Findings In this cross-sectional study of 2700 US hospitals, 9.0% met the definition of reliable excellence, including 61.8% of 335 5-star rated hospitals, whereas 47.7% of all hospitals achieved excellence in at least 1 simulation.
Meaning These findings suggest meaningful variation in hospital quality performance even among 5-star hospitals, and the measure of reliable excellence complements the Overall Hospital Quality Star Ratings by distinguishing hospitals likely to provide top-decile quality regardless of measure weights.
About the public’s health
The U.S. government is failing on vaccine policy. The Vaccine Integrity Project is here to help: Recently, the Department of Health and Human Services floated new standardsfor vaccine approvals, rescinded longstanding Covid-19 vaccine recommendations for healthy children and pregnant women, and fired all 17 members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory committee. These actions represent a significant shift in the federal government’s approach to vaccine policy and the safeguarding of the public’s health.
The Vaccine Integrity Project, launched in April by the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, anticipated this trajectory and the risks posed to the widely shared goal of protecting people from vaccine-preventable diseases. Its mission is simple and urgent: to ensure that vaccine use in the United States remains grounded in the best available evidence and focused squarely on protecting the public.
Top FDA vaccine official rejected broad use of Covid-19 shots, documents show: The US Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine official overrode agency experts in May to recommend against the broad use of two Covid-19 vaccines, newly released documents show.
Dr. Vinay Prasad, director of the agency’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in two memos that he disagreed with reviewers’ conclusions about the vaccines’ safety and about the ongoing threat of the virus that causes Covid-19, particularly for young and healthy people.