General
One-On-One With Trump’s Medicare And Medicaid Chief: Seema Verma Sarah Varney, Kaiser Health News
Seema Verma, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, sat down for a rare one-on-one interview with Kaiser Health News senior correspondent Sarah Varney.
Effort To Control Opioids In An ER Leaves Some Sickle Cell Patients In Pain Sam Whitehead, NPR News
India Hardy, and her brother, Rico, suffer regular bouts of severe pain when their sickle cell disease flares up. They say they used to find relief at St. Mary’s, their local hospital in Athens, Ga., until the facility changed the pain treatment protocol in its emergency room.
UK tobacco stocks rise after U.S. e-cig ban seen not as severe Siddharth Cavale and Ankur Banerjee, Reuters
Shares of British American Tobacco (BATS.L) and Imperial Brands Plc (IMB.L) rose on Friday after the U.S. health regulator exempted menthol and tobacco from a list of popular e-cigarette flavors that it banned under its new guidelines.
Smokers, Do Not Apply: U-Haul Won’t Hire Some Nicotine Users The Associated Press
U-Haul has a New Year’s resolution: Cut down on hiring people who smoke.
D.C. Council weighs banning flavored e-cigarettes and menthol cigarettes Fenit Nirappil, The Washington Post
Anti-tobacco advocates on Thursday urged the D.C. Council to add menthol cigarettes to its list of banned items as lawmakers consider prohibiting all flavored vaping products in the nation’s capital.
‘Grade A’ All-American Pot: The Next Big Export? Markian Hawryluk, Kaiser Health News
In a large warehouse, LivWell Enlightened Health feeds its cloned cannabis plants a custom blend of nutrients, sprays them with filtered water and pumps extra carbon dioxide into the air. LivWell releases three types of insects to clear the plants of unwanted pests without the use of toxic pesticides.
U.S. Futures Drop, Havens Jump on Mideast Flare-Up: Markets Wrap Sam Potter, Bloomberg
The risk-on sentiment that ushered in the new year came to an abrupt end on Friday as tensions between the U.S. and Iran escalated, sinking American equity futures with stocks and buoying haven assets including gold, the yen and Treasuries. Oil surged.
Payers
Appeals court’s risk-adjustment ruling deals blow to small insurers Shelby Livingston, Modern Healthcare
A federal appeals court earlier this week upheld the HHS’ methodology for running the Affordable Care Act risk-adjustment program, which will hurt small insurers that have argued the program is flawed and favors larger companies with more claims experience.
Providers
Doctors and hospitals support value-based Stark law changes Michael Brady, Modern Healthcare
Doctors and hospitals have voiced support for the Trump administration’s efforts to encourage value-based care by reforming physician self-referral rules, but they oppose including any sort of price transparency requirements.
Hospital mergers don’t improve readmissions, mortality or experience, study finds Maria Castellucci, Modern Healthcare
Recent hospital mergers and acquisitions haven’t led to significant improvements in some patient outcomes, according to a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Pharma, Biotech and Devices
Lab says its marijuana breath analyzer will hit the market in 2020 Megan Cassidy, San Francisco Chronicle
Testing a driver for alcohol impairment is relatively easy. Decades of research show drunken driving equals bad driving. Standardized tests mark various levels of impairment.
Carcinogen in Heartburn Drug May Build in Storage, Lab Finds Michelle Cortez, Bloomberg
The heartburn medicine Zantac appears to produce unacceptably high levels of a cancer-causing chemical when exposed to heat for as little as five days, according to a testing laboratory that’s urging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to recall all forms of the widely used product.
Deal will let more companies make an overdose antidote spray The Associated Press
More companies could begin making an easy-to-use version of an opioid overdose antidote under a deal announced Thursday by New York’s attorney general.
A spate of new class-action lawsuits threaten the CBD industry. Will they force Washington to act? Nicholas Florko, Stat News
Since the Food and Drug Administration can’t figure out whether supplements that contain cannabidiol, the marijuana-adjacent oil known as CBD, are legal, can a customer who thought they were buying a legal product demand their money back?
The biotech scorecard for the first quarter: 14 stock-moving events to watch Adam Feuerstein, Stat News
Here is STAT’s Biotech Scorecard, our regular ledger of stock-moving biotech events, for the first quarter.
Health IT
Rural hospital improves meds reconciliation via AI automation into EHR Bill Siwicki, HealthcareITNews
Automated sig translation system created time savings of 34 hours per month for clinicians, translating into about $11,000 in recaptured nursing productivity over 12 months. Further, 30-day readmission rate fell from 6.2% to 5.5%.
Opinions, Editorials and Perspectives
‘Mid-Level Provider’ Is a Big Miss for Everyone Patricia Davidson, Morning Consult
As we enter a new year, let alone be it the World Health Organization’s “Year of the Nurse and Midwife,” it feels as though debating over our professional titles, particularly in regard to physicians versus nurse practitioners, is a time-waster at best and completely misses the mark on what matters most to the people we serve.
Research Reports
Changes in Quality of Care after Hospital Mergers and Acquisitions Nancy D. Beaulieu et al., New England Journal of Medicine
The hospital industry has consolidated substantially during the past two decades and at an accelerated pace since 2010. Multiple studies have shown that hospital mergers have led to higher prices for commercially insured patients, but research about effects on quality of care is limited.
State-Specific Prevalence and Characteristics of Frequent Mental Distress and History of Depression Diagnosis Among Adults with Arthritis — United States, 2017 Janae D. Price et al., Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
In 2017, frequent mental distress and history of depression were commonly reported by adults with arthritis in all states, with clustering of high prevalence of frequent mental distress in Appalachian and southern states.
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