President Joe Biden took a cautious victory lap Friday in his quest to bring the COVID-19 pandemic under control, announcing that 300 million vaccine shots have been administered in the 150 days since he took office.
Pandemic restrictions are falling away almost everywhere — except inside many of America's nursing homes. Rules designed to protect the nation's most vulnerable from COVID-19 are still being enforced even though 75% of nursing home residents are now vaccinated and infections and deaths have plummeted.
Over the years, studies have shown that poor communication and coordination between physicians and nurses—both at the leadership level and on the front lines—can have a harmful impact on everything from patient care to employee satisfaction and retention.
Increasing financial pressures from the pandemic and constant concern over Congressional funding delays are prompting more community health centers to seek funding alternatives.
Beaumont turned to Spectrum Health after deals with Summa Health and Advocate Aurora Health fell through.
Beaumont turned to Spectrum Health after deals with Summa Health and Advocate Aurora Health fell through.
Congressional Democrats have big plans to extend health coverage to more Americans by closing the Medicaid coverage gap and potentially adding dental, hearing and vision benefits to Medicare.
A bill sponsored by Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) would ban clauses in health insurance contracts that prevent patients from suing over denied claims.
The agreement marks Illinois' largest independent physicians group's first out-of-state expansion since launching in 1999.
Medicaid, once considered the ugly duckling compared with the politically powerful and popular Medicare program, now covers nearly 1 in 4 Americans.
Animus toward the vaccine created turmoil for some providers. Dr. Eric Berger, a pediatrician in Philadelphia who opened his practice more than a dozen years ago, enforced mandatory shots in May and saw six of his 47 staff members walk out.
Mount Sinai researchers have created a neighborhood-level Covid-19 equity index to explore the relationship between socioeconomic disadvantages and infection and mortality rates during the pandemic, the health system announced Thursday.
A small, walk-in vaccination clinic held in Waterbury on Thursday is one of the reasons Vermont was able to be the first state in the country to give at least one COVID-19 vaccination shot to 80% of the eligible population.
Scientists at Oxford University in the United Kingdom are testing combinations of the two-dose COVID-19 vaccines made by AstraZeneca, Moderna, Novavax and Pfizer-BioNTech
Ochsner hopes to add another seven hospitals to its 35-strong roster with the latest proposed deal.
The ACA includes the federal framework for reviewing and approving biosimilars, and litigation guidelines that backbone the industry.
The HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology invited colleges and universities that predominantly educate people of color to apply for funding.
The country's nine largest Medicare Advantage plans are still struggling when it comes to member communication and engagement, according to J.D. Power.
Looking back at the Affordable Care Act provisions that have been challenged up to the Supreme Court and how the justices ruled on their fates.
Former Athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush has launched a new health record data platform and software services for healthcare agencies to build their own workflow apps.
He oversaw Baptist Hospital's mergers with South Miami Hospital and Homestead Hospital in 1995, subsequently becoming the President and CEO of the newly formed Baptist Health South Florida.
"I think we need to get into the weeds, to look at the details to see what happened," said Sabila Khan of Jersey City, New Jersey, whose father, Shafqat Rasul Khan, died of COVID-19. "If this happens again, our loved ones died in vain."
Church leaders used their influence and trusted reputations to help members of Black communities across the U.S. get vaccinations and testing clinics during the pandemic. Some want to extend their efforts beyond the fight against COVID-19 and give their flocks a place to seek healthcare for other ailments at a place they trust — the church.
Medical industry payments to orthopedists and neurosurgeons who operate on the spine have risen sharply, despite government accusations that some of these transactions may violate federal anti-kickback laws, drive up healthcare spending and put patients at risk of serious harm, a KHN investigation has found.
The new program will invest in "accelerating things that are already in progress" for COVID-19 but also would work to come up with treatments for other viruses, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert.
The entity that resulted from the merger of Tufts Health Plan and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care will officially be known as Point32Health, the insurers announced Wednesday.
Eight states have implemented or are developing the regulatory and data gathering infrastructure to track annual healthcare cost growth, and more are expected to follow suit.
Employees at a Kansas City hospital run by HCA voted to decertify their union. The SEIU said management intimidated workers during the election.
The 7-2 majority said the Republican-led states couldn't challenge the Affordable Care Act because they hadn't shown how they were injured.
The merger would create a $12 billion healthcare company operating 22 hospitals and 305 outpatient locations with more than 64,000 employees and 7,500 independent physicians, the largest healthcare footprint in Michigan.
While not all the data from its trial involving 40,000 participants in Latin America and Europe have been assessed yet, the company said interim results show the vaccine has an efficacy of 47% against COVID-19 disease of any severity.
At a meeting last week of an FDA advisory committee, vaccine experts suggested that the agency require the pharmaceutical companies to hold larger and longer clinical trials for the younger age groups. A few said FDA should hold off on authorizing vaccination of younger children for up to a year or two.
Modern Healthcare Politics and Policy Fellow Matti Gellman and Hospital Operations Reporter Alex Kacik discuss Modern Healthcare's analysis that showed that certain hospitals didn't become more efficient after merging.
The law gives the state insurance commissioner the power to fine hospitals and healthcare providers.
Researchers have identified dozens of DNA and RNA viruses in stationary and migratory bat species in Switzerland, including a coronavirus related to the MERS-CoV behind Middle East respiratory syndrome.
Providing annual preventive care services, lowering costs and closing care gaps are all goals listed in UnitedHealth Group's 2020 Sustainability Report.
Data from the state health department's COVID-19 dashboard on Wednesday showed 206 people hospitalized with the virus in southwestern Missouri — nearly double the 111 hospitalizations from that region at the start of May.
Steward will acquire Coral Gables Hospital, Florida Medical Center, Hialeah Hospital, North Shore Medical Center and Palmetto General Hospital.
AstraZeneca and other drugmakers have sued over an HHS advisory opinion that requires them to provide 340B drug discounts to contract pharmacies.
AMA policy promises collaborations with educational institutions and improving information to provider on long haul COVID.
Representatives for the New York hospital's surrounding district say Mount Sinai also must bring back disbanded services such as labor and delivery.
The research group Altarum estimates spending on the drug Aduhelm will comprise more than 1% of all national health spending by the mid-2020s, despite limited proof of efficacy.
While two of the states slammed hardest by the disaster, California and New York, celebrated their reopenings this week with fireworks and a multimillion-dollar drawing, hospitalizations in parts of Missouri are surging and cases are rising sharply in Texas.
Public comment on the draft from Project US@, an effort to create an industrywide data standard for documenting patient addresses in healthcare, will open in July.
Increased screening for the social determinants is not only an equity and justice issue. There is value for healthcare organizations in early assessment of patient risk factors.
The not-for-profit generic drug company added Anthem to its subsidiary that aims to team up with insurers to lower prescription drug costs.
Promising results from a federal demonstration has spurred a bipartisan group of senators to push for new pay models that support integrating primary care and behavioral health. It comes at a time when demand for mental health servcies have spiked due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Impact Purchasing Commitment includes increasing spending with minority and women-owned business enterprises, as well as local and employee-owned, cooperatively owned and/or not-for-profit-owned enterprises, by at least $1 billion over five years, a press release stated.
A Health Department spokesman said people who got the expired doses have received e-mail alerts and phone calls, and are being sent a letter, to ensure they are aware of the situation.
A healthcare expert is warning that the spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus will pose a serious risk this summer to people who are not fully vaccinated.
Federal health officials are increasingly accepting a timeline in which small numbers of COVID-19 infections may have occurred in the U.S. before the world ever became aware of a dangerous new virus erupting in China.
As with the current program, the overhauled expansion would continue using Medicaid funds to place recipients on private health insurance. It also includes incentives aimed at encouraging participants to work or meet certain health goals.
The American Medical Association warned against sedating people solely for a law enforcement purpose without a legitimate medical reason.
A judge has allowed a class action lawsuit against Aetna to move forward. More than 200 people are suing after they say their lumbar disc replacement surgery coverage was denied.
All of the approximately 82,000 Ballad Health patients qualified for charity care but did not receive or take advantage of it.
New research shows that about one-fifth of people who tested positive for COVID-19 but didn't have symptoms at the time later developed at least one condition that is now associated with long haulers.
The federal government on Monday joined a lawsuit against the operator of seven skilled nursing facilities in California for allegedly paying physicians for patient referrals.
HHS wants to scrap a rule from the Trump administration that would require community health centers pass 340B discounts on insulin and Epi-Pens directly to low-income patients.
A panel advising Congress on Medicare policy recommended ending a program that rewards skilled nursing facilities for low rates of hospital readmissions.
For the fourth quarter of 2020, median operating income was about 10% higher than the same period in 2019 for 301 not-for-profit systems reporting results.
"With all due respect, eat your heart out, the rest of the United States. There is no state in America that has more," Gov. Gavin Newsom said on the eve of the reopening. "The state is not just poised to recover, it's poised to come roaring back."
The delta variant was first detected in India and is a more transmissible version of the disease. The variant currently makes up 6% of all cases in the U.S.
Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly is trying to persuade deeply skeptical Republican lawmakers to extend Kansas' state of emergency for the coronavirus pandemic, arguing that it's still necessary for vaccinations and some testing for COVID-19.
A small study offers the first hint that an extra dose of COVID-19 vaccines just might give some organ transplant recipients a needed boost in protection.
The approaching 600,000 mark, as tracked by Johns Hopkins University, is greater than the population of Baltimore or Milwaukee. It is about equal to the number of Americans who died of cancer in 2019. And as bad as that is, the true toll is believed to be significantly higher.
A federal judge ruled over the weekend that if employees of the Houston Methodist hospital system don't like it, they can go work elsewhere. That ruling in the closely watched legal case over how far health care institutions can go to protect patients and others against COVID may be the first of its kind in the U.S. but it won't be the end of the debate.
Humana is investing heavily in the home health space by acquiring One Homecare and Kindred at Home.
70% of mothers with children under age 18 are in the US labor force. Roughly 27% of working moms have said they’ve been treated as if they weren’t committed to their work, compared with 20% of working dads.
In this episode, Tenet's Sally Deitch talks about balancing family and professional lives.
Modern Healthcare’s "Next Up" podcast is produced by CareContent, Inc. and hosted by CareContent’s CEO, Kadesha Thomas Smith.
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The 50-year agreement will add new services, create clinical training programs, boost access to clinical trials and increase UNR Med's class sizes.
Senior-focused primary care provider Cano Health has acquired University Health Care in a deal that expands its presence in South Florida through University's 13 facilities and more than 300 providers.
Steve Walsh, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association joins the Check Up to discuss how the industry can address clinician burnout.
HCA’s expansion into trauma centers alarms health policy analysts who suggest its motive is more about chasing profit than improving patient care.
Centene will reserve $1.1 billion for future settlements related to its Envolve pharmacy benefit manager. The agreements comes as more states investigate the insurer's PBM operations.
A COVID-19 relief bill helped lower new exchange members' average monthly premiums by 26% since April 1.
The Novavax vaccine, which is easy to store and transport, is expected to play an important role in boosting vaccine supplies in the developing world.
In its announcement, however, the FDA said that it has significant concerns about the performance of the test and the potential for false-negative or false-positive results.
Experts said some states are seeing increased immunity because there were high rates of natural spread of the disease, which has so far killed nearly 600,000 Americans.
The Houston Methodist Hospital system suspended 178 employees without pay last week over their refusal to get vaccinated. Of them, 117 sued seeking to overturn the requirement and over their suspension and threatened termination.
The Oklahoma Health Care Authority, which oversees the Medicaid program, reported that 101,001 state residents have already qualified for benefits, including about 60,000 from urban areas and more than 41,000 from rural Oklahoma. Benefits will begin July 1.
A successful bill would advance a key plank of President Joe Biden's domestic agenda even as Democrats struggle to make progress on other fronts. Allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices consistently wins strong public support in opinion polls.
The data breach caused patient information to be posted on Twitter in 2018.
Transcarent, a new health startup led by Glen Tullman, has raised another $58 million.
The investment was led by the company's early backers, venture funds General Catalyst in Palo Alto, Calif., and Tullman's 7Wire Ventures. Also investing are heavyweights Merck, Bayer and Kleiner Perkins, as well as GreatPoint Ventures and Threshold Ventures.
Transcarent picks up where Tullman's most recent company, Livongo, left off: It's essentially a digital healthcare concierge service for self-insured companies, helping their employees get the most bang for their dollars. Transcarent's app can help employees connect with a doctor via text message, schedule an in-person appointment, request a prescription, find in-home treatment options or even figure out the hospitals that have highest success rates for a particular type of care.
"It's pretty clear that health care today is more confusing, complex and more costly than ever before," says Tullman, who is CEO of Transcarent. "The payers said they were going to give us better and more cost-effective system, and it hasn't happened. Post-pandemic, how many people have said, 'I don't want to go back to the old way?' People say, 'I want to do this at home, where it's higher quality and more convenient.' "
The company has a head start after acquiring BridgeHealth, which specializes in arranging bundled surgical care for workers at more than 100 companies, including Target and Delta Air Lines. "We have a healthy customer base already," Tullman said.
Transcarent, which previously raised $40 million, has 135 employees, with offices in Chicago, San Francisco and Denver. "I suspect we'll do a lot of our hiring in Chicago and Denver. It's hard to get people and keep people in California," Tullman said.
This story first appeared in our sister publication, Crain's Chicago Business.
Vaccine hesitancy remains a major hurdle to reaching the desired 70% vaccinated goal set by the CDC. About 20% of the U.S. public remains vaccine hesitant, saying they will not get a COVID-19 vaccine or will only do so if required.
