Healthcare Reads and News

The not – so – latest healthcare articles to arrive in my inbox. Pay attention to the xpostfactoid piece. What Andrew is detailing is there is assistance in getting better plans offering lower cost as defined by President Joe Biden’s Rescue Plan. People are not taking advantage of those discounts for lower cost healthcare insurance.

Also, the last two articles may be of greater interest.

“Violence against health workers ‘can no longer be tolerated,’ hospitals tell AG” (beckershospitalreview.com)

“Hospitals are bringing their concerns about violence against healthcare workers to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.

While violence against workers at hospitals and health systems is not new — and organizations have long made efforts to reduce violence — the problem has been exacerbated during the pandemic, the American Hospital Association wrote to Mr. Garland in a March 23 letter. 

The association cited examples of violence against healthcare workers as well as research published in 2021 indicating 44.4 percent of surveyed nurses reported experiencing physical violence and 67.8 percent reported experiencing verbal abuse during the pandemic.”

“Infamous Vitamin C Study May Rely on Fraudulent Data” | MedPage Today

“The data underpinning an infamous study of vitamin C for sepsis may be fraudulent, according to an analysis by an Australian physician and statistician that’s making waves among hospitalists and intensivists.

Kyle Sheldrick, MBBS, who is completing his PhD at the University of New South Wales, alleges that the pre- and post- comparison groups involved in the 94-patient study were too similar to be realistic.”

xpostfactoid: “HealthCare.gov should tell 600,000 low-income bronze plan enrollees: switch to silver”

This may be just plain ignorance on the part of the insurees or the navigators are missing the difference.

“BA.2 Is Behind More Than 1 in 3 COVID Cases in US” (medscape.com)

“More than a third of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. are now caused by the Omicron subvariant BA.2.

Although the proportion of BA.2 cases is increasing, overall infections are still declining from the record highs seen in January, according to Reuters.

For the week ending March 19, BA.2 accounted for 35% of U.S. infections, according to the latest data from the CDC. That compares with 22% a week before, which was revised down from 23%.”

“New Group Fights Push to Return Schools to ‘Normal’” | MedPage Today

“When Kaliris Salas-Ramirez, PhD, was getting ready to moderate a virtual town hall in December 2021, she thought she knew what to expect. The plan was to discuss “ways school communities can be kept safe” in the midst of a winter COVID-19 surge, according to the flyer for the event co-hosted by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and Parents for Responsive Equitable Safe Schools (PRESS).

The recommendations seemed straightforward enough: layered mitigation in schools with a combination of safety measures; more vaccination, testing, ventilation, filtration, and masks.

‘There were six scientists, each had a role, each had slides that they were going to present — this wasn’t something that we were negotiating on at that point,’ said Salas-Ramirez, an assistant medical professor at the CUNY School of Medicine in New York City.

Instead, a potential last-minute addition to the event caused what one Twitter user called an ‘explosion'”:

“The Evolving Role of the Medical Geneticist” | MedPage Today

“In the not-too-distant past, the focus for medical geneticists was diagnosis.

Now, genetics touches nearly every medical specialty, either via screening programs or treatments targeted to specific diseases. Ob/Gyns counsel women with BRCA mutations on breast and ovarian cancer risk. Neurologic conditions like spinal muscular atrophy and Duchenne muscular dystrophy have seen novel therapies come to market in recent years. And cancer drugs are tailored to tumors with specific mutations.”

The dilemma of private practice physicians” (beckersasc.com)

“Physicians are flocking to employed models — almost 70 percent of physicians reported being employed at the end of 2020, with 1 in 5 being employed by corporate entities, according to a report from Avalere. 

But some physicians believe the employment model lacks a critical element to patient care: Autonomy. 

‘Small private practices give physicians the ability to provide the best care for their patients and to adapt to changes quickly and effectively,’ Joseph Anderson, MD, professor of Medicine at Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine in Hanover, N.H., told Becker’s. ‘Small private practices are the lifeblood of U.S. medicine, and their ability to survive is vital to healthcare in this country.'”

“More supply chain disruptions to come & 6 more updates” (beckersasc.com)

Selected two issues which I thought were issues, the latter being the greater of the two.

“Here are six supply chain disruption stories reported during the last 10 days:

1. To help ease chronic blood shortages in the U.S., hospitals should partner with blood centers to increase donations and work with centers to host blood drives, America’s Blood Centers said.

2. States will see a significant reduction in shipments of COVID-19 monoclonal antibody treatments from the federal government beginning March 21 after the White House’s request for $15.6 billion in pandemic funding stalled in Congress.”

“The age group slowest to return to the workforce” (beckershospitalreview.com)

I picked two (numbers 2 and 3) off of the list which I thought were most interesting. There were others you nay find defining.

“2. Employment by those younger than 45 or age 65 and older rebounded to about their December 2019 levels by December 2021, with some slowness among those ages 25 – 34.

3. However, there was still an employment gap of more than 1 million Americans ages 45-54 and more than 800,000 Americans ages 55 – 64 by the end of 2021.”

“COVID Pandemic Fuelled 2021 Population Drop in 73% of US Counties” (medscape.com)

(Reuters) – The toll of the COVID-19 pandemic was reflected in a natural decrease last year in the population of nearly three-quarters of U.S. counties versus the two previous years, the census bureau said on Thursday.

More than 73% of U.S. counties experienced natural decrease, or an excess of deaths over births, up from 55.5% in 2020 and 45.5% in 2019, bureau data showed.

A little later in this article; “Between 2020 and 2021, population increased in about 65% of metropolitan areas within the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.”

“Moderna says its low-dose COVID shots work for kids under 6” | Modern Healthcare

“Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine works in babies, toddlers and preschoolers, the company announced Wednesday — a development that could pave the way for the littlest kids to be vaccinated by summer if regulators agree.

Moderna said that in the coming weeks it would ask regulators in the U.S. and Europe to authorize two small-dose shots for youngsters under 6.”

“Doctors Finding Hurdles to Using Pills to Treat COVID-19” (medscape.com)

This is similar to every other treatment I have read about. If you can get the treatment early on, you avoid or prevent (less likely) a severe form of Covid.

“High-risk COVID-19 patients now have new treatments they can take at home to stay out of the hospital — if doctors get the pills to them fast enough.

Health systems around the country are rushing out same-day prescription deliveries. Some clinics have started testing and treating patients in one visit,

The goal is to get patients started on either Pfizer’s Paxlovid tablets or Merck’s molnupiravir capsules within five days of symptoms appearing. That can prevent people with big health risks from growing sicker and filling up hospitals if another surge develops.”