From Washington, DC

• The Wall Street Journal reports
  • “Congressional leaders struck a cautiously optimistic tone Wednesday on reaching a deal combining tighter border security with aid for Ukraine, as they emerged from meeting with President Biden at the White House.
  • “House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) said the hour-and-20-minute sit down was “productive” while reiterating Republicans’ demand that changing border law was a condition for further funding Kyiv, which is one piece of a stalled $110.5 billion foreign-aid package championed by Biden.”
• and
  • “The Biden administration on Wednesday finalized requirements to streamline the process for doctors and patients seeking health insurance approval for medical care and treatments.
  • “The rule aims to shorten the timeline for the so-called prior authorization process to as little as 72 hours for many of the tens of millions of people who get their health insurance through Medicare Advantage, Medicaid or an Affordable Care Act health plan by automating some of the processing of the requests.
  • “Plans would also have to share more information with doctors about the status of decisions and information on denials, with a turnaround time of seven calendar days for non-urgent requests.”
• Here is a link to the CMS fact sheet on the final rule.
  • “Impacted payers must implement certain operational provisions, generally beginning January 1, 2026. In response to public comment on the proposed rule, impacted payers have until compliance dates, generally beginning January 1, 2027, to meet the API development and enhancement requirements in this final rule. The exact compliance dates vary by the type of payer.”

• STAT News reports that the federal government dismissed its appeal of a D.C. district court decision vacating a Trump Administration rule favoring use of copay accumulators by health plans. “Insurers can still use the copay accumulators when patients use brand drugs that do have generic competition.”

• MedPage Today tells us,
  • “The FDA cleared an artificial-intelligence (AI)-powered device designed to non-invasively detect skin cancer in the primary care setting, the agency announced on Tuesday.
  • “Developer DermaSensor said the device uses AI-powered spectroscopy technology to non-invasively evaluate cellular and subcellular characteristics of a lesion for any of the three common skin cancers — melanoma, basal cell carcinoma, and squamous cell carcinoma. The wireless, handheld device then provides a result in real time using an FDA-cleared algorithm.”

• MedTech Dive informs us,
  • “The Food and Drug Administration issued an alert for patients and healthcare providers about the risks associated with an Exactech shoulder replacement device after the company “declined to initiate a voluntary recall.”
  • “FDA officials advised healthcare professionals against implanting Equinoxe Shoulder Systems packaged in defective bags because of a risk of oxidation that can accelerate device wear or failure. The issue could lead to patients needing additional surgery to replace or correct devices.
  • “Exactech recalled other orthopedic devices in 2021 and 2022, initially because of excessive and premature wear of unknown cause, and later because it found a problem with its packaging.”

From the public health and medical research front,

• Beckers Hospital Review points out 35 states where respiratory illness levels remain high or very high, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

• The Wall Street Journal lets us know,
  • “Americans are living longer, but spending less time in good health.
  • “The estimated average proportion of life spent in good health declined to 83.6% in 2021, down from 85.8% in 1990, according to an analysis of the latest data from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation’s Global Burden of Disease study, a research effort based at the University of Washington.
  • “The decrease of time spent in good health is partly because medical advances are catching and treating diseases that once would have killed us. But it is also because of the rising prevalence, often among younger people, of conditions such as obesity, diabetes and substance-use disorders.
  • “Declining health takes a deep physical and emotional toll on patients and their caregivers. There are also broad ramifications on society, including rising health costs that eat into household budgets, as well as more people who want to work but can’t.
  • “The period of life spent not healthy is getting larger and larger and the implications of that are enormous,” says Dr. John Rowe, a professor of health policy and aging at Columbia University. “70 is the new 80.”

• Beckers Hospital Review adds,
  • “The expected increase in new cancer diagnoses this year is record-setting, even as overall cancer mortality is expected to continue its decline, the American Cancer Society said in its latest report.
  • “The report was based on the most recent data on population-based cancer occurrences and outcomes collected by central cancer registries through 2020 and mortality data from the National Center of Health Statistics through 2021.
  • “The projected number of new diagnoses tops 2 million for the first time, with an increase in six out of 10 top cancers. Notably, colorectal cancer new cases have shifted mortality patterns in adults younger than 50 and have moved up from being the fourth leading cause of cancer death to the first in men and second in women.”

• AHRQ announced the following study result:
  • “Diagnostic errors can result in significant morbidity and mortality. This large cohort study reviewed the health records of 2,428 adult inpatients who were transferred to the intensive care unit (ICU) and/or died in the hospital to estimate frequency, cause, and harms of diagnostic errors. Nearly a quarter (23.0%) of patients in the cohort experienced a diagnostic error, and 6.6% of patients who died had a diagnostic error. Delays in ordering and interpreting tests and problems with clinical assessment were the most common contributing factors resulting in transfer to ICU and/or death.”

• According to Healio,
  • “Rates of long COVID were similar between groups of people who received Paxlovid and those who do not.
  • “COVID-19 rebound is not linked to an overall risk for long COVID.”

• Per Beckers Payer Issues,
  • “RSV vaccinations brought more older adults to their primary care offices in the last months of 2023, one factor behind rising medical costs in Medicare Advantage, UnitedHealth Group executives said. 
  • “Andrew Witty, CEO of UnitedHealth Group, told investors on a Jan. 12 call that more visits to primary care providers for RSV vaccines led to increased medical service costs in other areas for the Medicare population. 
  • “To be clear, all of that is good news for healthcare. These are seniors, many of whom had not been to the office in a long time,” Mr. Witty said. “They’ve come back in now, got vaccinated, and physicians have picked up on other things.” 

From the U.S. healthcare business front,

• Healthcare Dive notes,
  • “Cigna announced a slew of leadership updates on Wednesday, including an expansion of chief financial officer Brian Evanko’s role.
  • “Evanko will continue to hold the CFO position, and he’ll also serve as president and CEO of the company’s Cigna Healthcare division, its benefits business, which includes the U.S. Commercial and U.S. Government segments.”  

• Per Beckers Payer Issues,
  • “Humana plans to lay off a small portion of its workforce, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported Jan. 16. 
  • “Humana did announce some limited workforce reductions last week,” a Humana spokesperson told Becker’s Jan. 16. “The impacted positions represented a small percentage of our total workforce and were geographically dispersed across multiple locations.”

• Forbes reports,
  • “Three months ago, venture capital firm General Catalyst announced an unusual move: The creation of an entirely new company that would someday acquire a multi-billion dollar health system that could serve as a proving ground for new technologies.
  • “On Wednesday, that company – the Healthcare Assurance Transformation Corporation, or HATCo – revealed its intended target: Akron, Ohio-based Summa Health, a nonprofit three-hospital system and health insurer.”

• Medical Economics notes,
  • “This year promises to be a Super Bowl of telehealth, according to plans by the American Telemedicine Association (ATA).
  • “The year 2024 has at least two major factors that could be hugely influential for telehealth, according to the organization and its affiliated ATA Action advocacy nonprofit.
  • “It’s a presidential election year, and it will bring the end of the telehealth flexibilities that Congress enacted by during the COVID-19 pandemic and continued after the end of the public health emergency. Those need to remain in place, said Kyle Zebley, ATA senior vice president for public policy and ATA Action executive director.
  • “With Congress back in session, the clock officially starts counting down,” Zebley said in a news release this month. “It’s time for the administration and our congressional leaders to take permanent action to ensure patients across the country have access to safe, affordable, and effective health care where and when they need it and provide certainty to beneficiaries and our nation’s health care providers. That would be a win-win.”

• The Brookings Institution offers a report assessing early experience with arbitration under the No Surprises Act.