PROGRAMMING NOTE: We’ll be away next week for vacation, but we’ll be back in your boxes on Tuesday, January 3rd.
Congress Fiscal 2023 bill of expenses provides assurance to the healthcare industry that there is bipartisan support for maintaining rules passed during the Covid-19 pandemic that allow easier access to virtual and home care.
The bill, which lawmakers plan to pass this week, would last until 2024:
– eased Medicare rules allowing expanded access to telehealth. Those rules were previously scheduled to expire five months after the end of the public health emergency Covid, which could come next year. The Department of Health and Human Services allowed Medicare patients easier access to telehealth early in the pandemic and Congress reinforced that decision in a March 2020 Covid Relief Act.
– a rule allowing high-deductible health plans to provide subscribers with health appointments before they have reached their discounts. The rule would previously have expired at the end of the year. Congress first allowed high-deductible plans to pay for virtual visits in the March 2020 law. Lawmakers previously allowed the provision to expire at the end of 2021 passing another extension in March.
– giving up hospitals to treat some emergency department and hospital patients from their homes. Movement, approved by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in November 2020, it was intended to expand hospital capacity as healthcare organizations were overwhelmed with Covid-19 patients. The waiver would have expired with the end of the public health emergency.
Yes but: These are all big wins for healthcare industry groups. But some also took a loss. The bill supports a ban against the creation of a national patient ID that providers and health technology firms say is necessary to ensure a safe and seamless transition to electronic medical records.
This is where we explore the ideas and innovators shaping healthcare.
Now we can get our medical data and results in cool mobile apps – great, right? But if they are written in medicine, the average person will not be able to understand them. So whose job is it to translate our medical histories into something understandable? Let Ruth know.
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Today in ours Pulse control podcast, Ben talks to Mark Cuban, famous for his ABC TV show “Shark Tank” and one of America’s most prominent investors, about the Cost Plus Drug Company he founded with Alex Oshmyansky to take over the pharmaceutical market and lower prices. low of drugs.
The US will remain on top list of donors to global health causes if Congress, as expected, passes the fiscal 2023 spending bill this week.
But the 7 percent increase in funding that will be overseen by the State Department and the Agency for International Development comes amid huge needs stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic, during which the fight against infectious diseases such as measles, polio and HIV, was interrupted.
From 10.5 billion dollars for the state and USAID in year-end expenses package:
– The biggest increase, $445 million, will go to HIV/AIDS programs, for a total of 6.7 billion dollars. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria received the largest percentage increase at $440 million, increasing the US contribution to $2 billion for next year.
– Global health security will get $200 million more, for a total of $900 million. The money will go to programs that seek to build the capacity of other countries to prevent, detect and respond to infectious disease outbreaks. At least part of it expected to go to the World Bank Pandemic Fund.
– Tuberculosis programs will see an increase of $23.5 million to nearly $395 million.
– Malaria programs will take $795 million, an increase of $20 million. Polio programs will receive $85 million, an increase of $10 million.
– Funding for family planning and reproductive health programs were unchanged at $575 million. The US will also contribute $32.5 million to the United Nations Population Fund.
The Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will also receive nearly $700 million in global health funding.
California could be the third state to decriminalize “magic mushrooms” if the Democratic state Senate. Scott Wiener’s new bill becomes law.
Wiener, who represents San Francisco and the surrounding area, wants to make it legal to possess plant-based psychedelic substances, including psilocybin, dimethyltryptamine (DMT), ibogaine and mescaline, for personal use by adults 21 and older.
Psychedelics are on the verge of drug legalization:
– Oregon, in 2020 and Colorado, earlier this year, they decriminalized psychedelics. Both changes were the result of ballot initiatives.
– Oakland, Santa Cruz and San Francisco in California; Ann Arbor, Detroit and Hazel Park in Michigan; Somerville, Cambridge, Easthampton and Northampton in Massachusetts and Washington, DC, no longer treat possession of psychedelic plants as a crime.
Wiener’s bill exempts LSD and MDMA, or ecstasy, two synthetic mind-altering drugs currently being tested for use in treating anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, respectively.
The bill includes penalties for transporting the substances it decriminalizes on school grounds or giving them to anyone under 21.
Health Information Technology The Advisory Committee that Congress created to advise HHS on how to improve the flow of medical records is about to get more diverse.
Comptroller General Gene Dodaro named seven new members to the committee Monday, five of them women.
Last year, the GAO announced an all-male pool of nominees who sent some in the world of health IT in an uproar. The new group will bring the panel towards greater balance, as there are currently 19 men and eight women appointed.
The new members will have a three-year term on the committee. They are:
– Deven McGraw, lead for data stewardship and sharing at Invitae, a genetic testing company, and a former senior official in the privacy division of the HHS Office for Civil Rights
– Kikelomo Belizaire, chief medical officer at Pegasystems, a software company, and former medical director of insurer Anthem’s commercial unit
– Shila Blend, director of health information technology for the North Dakota Health Information Network and former deputy chief of staff for the state’s response to Covid-19
– Hannah Galvin, chief medical information officer of the Cambridge Health Alliance, a Massachusetts health care provider, and former senior manager of clinical effectiveness at athenahealth
– Anna McCollister, a patient advocate and former lead advocate for participatory research at The Scripps Institute for Translational Sciences
– Bryant Karras, chief of medical informatics at the Washington State Department of Health and a former assistant professor at the University of Washington
– Naresh Sundar Rajan, chief data officer at CyncHealth, who helps share information between providers in Nebraska and neighboring states
Why it matters: Congress created the advisory committee through 21st Century Cures Act six years ago.
The panel advises the HHS National Coordinator for Health Information Technology on policies, standards, and certification criteria related to the implementation of health information technology to improve electronic access, sharing, and use of health data.
