DCMedical News: Thursday, June 11, 2020
DCMedical News-DCMN
Washington, D.C.
Thursday, June 11, 2020
DCMedical News is published every day both the House and the Senate are in session and on pre-pandemic Regularly Scheduled Session days (see CQ calendar, below).
THE BIG STORY IN HEALTH CARE
Coronavirus News: (reference pages below under Reading & References)
Tracking by Johns Hopkins shows on 6-10 at 8:00 p.m. EST worldwide 7,347,323 confirmed cases; 415,174 deaths worldwide; 112,769 U.S. deaths (27%).
COVID-19 and Society
Back to Health (Care):
The Trump Administration urges the public (here) to start using doctors’ offices and hospitals again. Lisa Rosenbaum explores (here) the impact of COVID-19 on non-COVID patients, in the New England Journal of Medicine. A cardiologist tells her, in describing a dramatic decline in patients presenting with acute coronary syndromes, “I think the toll on non-Covid patients will be much greater than Covid deaths.”
Lockdown:
Anti-Contagion policies received a boost in a study published in Nature (here). “We compile new data on 1,717 local, regional, and national non-pharmaceutical interventions deployed in the ongoing pandemic across localities in China, South Korea, Italy, Iran, France, and the United States . . . In the absence of policy actions, we estimate that early infections of COVID-19 exhibit exponential growth rates of roughly 38% per day. We find that anti-contagion policies have significantly and substantially slowed this growth.”
HOSPITALS, NURSING HOMES AND OTHER HEALTH CARE FACILITIES
Three Private Citizens
Becker’s headline, “Trump's 'Mar-a-Lago crowd' played role in VA's $16B EHR contract with Cerner,” summarizes results of a General Accountability Office report (here) examining the work of “three private citizens” making “numerous recommendations from 2016-18 on various Department of Veterans Affairs initiatives, including its $16 billion EHR contact with Cerner.” Group members were identified as Marvel Entertainment [Comics] Chairman Ike Perlmutter, West Palm Beach, Fla.-based physician Bruce Moskowitz, MD [an internist, profiled in STAT+ here], and lawyer Marc Sherman. The influence was previously reported in 2018 by ProPublica, here.
GAO’s review of the 77 subject matter email exchanges “indicates that the three private citizens acted as organizers by scheduling meetings with VA officials and helping to plan events, such as the VA’s medical device registry summit that occurred in June 2018." Further, the report says, "At times, the emails show they acted as advisors by making recommendations regarding, for example, the Cerner contract negotiation, mobile application development, and potential candidates for senior level VA positions." Politico has previously reported that “Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was instrumental in Shulkin’s June 2017 decision to choose the Cerner Corp. system with a no-bid contract.”
MEDICARE, MEDICAID AND COMMERCIAL HEALTH INSURANCE
Workplace Wellness Program Impact
None, for non-believers. Economists from Illinois, the NBER, Stanford and Chicago studied “Effects of a Workplace Wellness Program on Employee Health, Health Beliefs and Medical Use,” in a randomized trial with nearly 5,000 employees, published in JAMA Internal Medicine (here). “This randomized clinical trial showed that a comprehensive workplace wellness program had no significant effects on measured physical health outcomes, rates of medical diagnoses, or the use of health care services after 24 months, but it increased the proportion of employees reporting that they have a primary care physician and improved employee beliefs about their own health.”
DRUGS & DEVICES
The British Medical Journal, on American Medical Societies and Their Financial Ties to Drug and Device Industries
A study in the BMJ (here, summarized in STAT+ here) finds “235 of 328 [medical society] leaders (72%) had financial ties to industry . . . Total payments for 2017-19 leadership were almost $130m (£103m; €119m), with a median amount for each leader of $31,805 . . .General payments, including those for consultancy and hospitality, were $24.8m and research payments were $104.6m—predominantly payments to academic institutions with association leaders named as principle investigators . . . median amounts varied from $212 for the American Psychiatric Association leaders to $518,000 for the American Society of Clinical Oncology . . . Financial relationships between the leaders of influential US professional medical associations and industry are extensive, although with variation among the associations. The quantum of payments raises questions about independence and integrity, adding weight to calls for policy reform.”
340B Drug Sales Reach $30 Billion in 2019, 23% Over 2018, Still no List of Amounts Purchased by Hospital
Drug Channels reports (here) that “The 340B program is now almost as large as the Medicaid program’s outpatient drug sales. However, 340B lacks Medicaid’s regulatory infrastructure and controls. Medicaid rebates directly and transparently lower drug costs for the government, while 340B discounts disappear into providers’ financial statements. It’s troubling and hard to defend.”
READINGS & REFERENCES
Coronavirus Public Health Resources and References (alphabetical):
Association of American Medical Colleges Clinical Guidance Repository, here.
AMA resource page for physicians here. AMA guide to medical education and COVID-19, here.
American Public Health Association information here.
CDC information page here.
CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) Current Emergencies website, here.
Council of State Governments, here.
JAMA Network’s COVID-19 resource center here.
Library of Congress Coronavirus Research Guide, (here) from the In Custodia Legis blog of the Library of Congress (LoC), with links to Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports.
NIH information page here.
National Library of Medicine Coronavirus page here,
New England Journal of Medicine update here, New England Journal of Medicine Journal Watch here.
The Lancet COVID-19 Resource Centre here and real-time dashboard to monitor clinical trials, here.
The New York Times Coronavirus coverage, here.
State actions, Kaiser Family Foundation, here.
UC Hastings College of Law’s “The Source” (on health care prices and competition) COVID-19 page, here.
The White House open research dataset (CORD-19) here.
World Health Organization COVID-19 page here.
U.S. House of Representatives:
Members at https://www.house.gov/representatives
Committees and Members at https://www.house.gov/committees
U. S. Senate:
Committees and Members at https://www.senate.gov/committees
CQ 2020 Calendar of Regularly Scheduled Sessions, here.
PUBLICATION SCHEDULE FOR DCMEDICAL NEWS
June 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 23, 24, 25, 26
July 21, 22, 23, 24, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31
August, none
Notes to: Fred Hyde, MD, JD, MBA; fredhyde@aol.com.